Tuesday, October 19, 2010
[The following, by Daniel Greenberg, is crossposted from Sultan Knish.]
The ADL just honored Rupert Murdoch who delivered a speech mentioning Jabotinsky. At the Huffington Post, David A Love demands to know "Why would a prominent civil rights organization -- one which is supposedly dedicated to fighting bigotry and discrimination -- present an award to a man whose cable network profits from race-baiting and hatred?"
But the question could just as easily be asked of Love himself, who blogs at a left wing site that profits from race-baiting and hatred-- directed against Jews. In his speech, Murdoch stated,
"Now it seems that the most virulent strains come from the left. Often this new anti-Semitism dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel."
Love then goes on to prove Murdoch's point by making a series of false claims about Israel, describing Netanyahu's Likud-Labor coalition as "hard-right" and accusing him of promoting gender segregation and criminalizing political opposition. Then David A. Love suggests that the ADL only honored Rupert Murdoch, because he has "deep pockets". Because you know money is the only thing Jews care about.
The lynching of Leo Frank is invoked by Love to argue that the ADL has strayed from its roots by supporting Republicans. But let's remember who the Knights of Mary Phagan, who organized the lynch of Leo Frank, really were. Joseph Mackey Brown was a Democrat. Eugene Herbert Clay was a Democrat. E.P. Dobbs was a Democrat. But not just any Democrats. They were former Mayors and Governors. Prominent Democrats.
Then there was Senator Thomas Watson, who would be blogging at Huff Po is he were still alive today. As there wasn't any such thing then, he had to resort to rags like The People's Party Paper. Watson was an anti-war and civil rights activist, and a supporter of the "working man", who proved to be too progressive even for the Democrats. He campaigned against "the moneyed class" and for high taxes. He denounced one opponent as "the Corporation Candidate for Governor", a familiar Democratic line of attack today. And Watson's screeds about Jewish power are all too typical of the hate spewed by by the radical left today. And they helped lead to Leo Frank's lynching.
Watson still has a 12 foot statue of himself standing in front of the Georgia Capitol Building. Unlike the Confederate flag, there's no media outcry demanding that it be taken down. And why would there be. Aside from some of his more embarrassing racist outbursts and his preference for socialism on the state level, rather than national or international socialism, Watson was a good democrat and a good liberal.
Progressives who murder history every time they publish a book, would like us to believe that the ADL was created to fight Republican bigotry. It was created to fight Democratic bigotry. And that is what it's doing when it lists organizations that promote hate and violence against Jews. Either directly or by supporting terrorists.
Let's remind ourselves of what all the "Boycott Israel" and "Gaza is a Prison Camp" really support...
I got out of the car to see what was happening and saw that they were dragging something behind them. Within moments they were in front of me and, to my horror, I saw that it was a body, a man they were dragging by the feet. The lower part of his body was on fire and the upper part had been shot at, and the head beaten so badly that it was a pulp, like red jelly.
I thought he was a soldier because I could see the remains of khaki trousers and boots. My God, I thought, they've killed this guy. He was dead, he must have been dead, but they were still beating him, madly, kicking his head. They were like animals.
It's not too far from Leo Frank after all. Not far at all.
At the same time, the guy that looked like a soldier was being beaten and the crowd was getting angrier and angrier, shouting 'Allah akbar' - God is great. They were dragging the dead man around the street like a cat toying with a mouse. It was the most horrible thing that I have ever seen and I have reported from Congo, Kosovo, many bad places. In Kosovo, I saw Serbs beating an Albanian but it wasn't like this. There was such hatred, such unbelievable hatred and anger distorting their faces.
The worst thing was that I realised the anger that they were directing at me was the same as that which they'd had toward the soldier before dragging him from the police station and killing him. Somehow I escaped and ran and ran not knowing where I was going. I never saw the other guy they killed, the one they threw out of the window.
I thought that I'd got to know the Palestinians well. I've made six trips this year and had been going to Ramallah every day for the past 16 days. I thought they were kind, hospitable people. I know they are not all like this and I'm a very forgiving person but I'll never forget this. It was murder of the most barbaric kind. When I think about it, I see that man's head, all smashed. I know that I'll have nightmares for the rest of my life."
This is what we're up against. This is what real hate is.
We're still being lynched. And when the left supports our lynchers and then wonders why the ADL is honoring Murdoch, rather than Cindy Sheehan, why it's not a supporter of the Mosque at Ground Zero and why it highlights hate against Jews-- the answer is really obvious. The ADL is fairly liberal, but so is Anti-Semitism today.
According to Love, the ADL should be worried about Beck or Palin quoting dead writers who were anti-Semitic. (If the left were serious about this, they would stop quoting socialists like H.G. Wells and Jack London.) But the left doesn't just quote non-bigoted sections of works by bigoted writers. It continues to create, originate and distribute bigotry today. Strip away all political affiliations, and if I tune in to FOX News or CNN, where will I be more likely to encounter bigoted propaganda that targets Jews and Israel? The answer is CNN.
Who was the anchor who just got fired for ranting about the Jews? I'll give you a hint. He doesn't work for FOX News. Who was the producer who got fired for sending condolences to the "spiritual leader" for a terrorist group that routinely talks about wiping out Israel and the Jews. She worked for CNN. And that is the way CNN has always been.
Let's compare Ted Turner to Rupert Murdoch.
"The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism."
"For me, this ongoing war is a fairly obvious fact of life. Every day, the citizens of the Jewish homeland defend themselves against armies of terrorists whose maps spell out the goal they have in mind: a Middle East without Israel. In Europe, Jewish populations increasingly find themselves targeted by people who share that goal. And in the United States, I fear that our foreign policy sometimes emboldens these extremists."
Should the ADL really honor those who support the lynchers, like Ted Turner, or those who support the most basic of civil rights for Jews-- the right not to be murdered-- like Rupert Murdoch? If you try to lynch people, can you then complain when they don't honor you. No you cannot.
they honored murdoch because he has "deep pockets". i thought it was the jews who hac all the money.