(Washington Post)
Richard Cohen January 21 at 5:32 PM
When and how did it become acceptable to be an anti-Semite? When did it become okay to socialize with and even praise a Jew hater? I am referring, of course, to Louis Farrakhan, who spouts the most vile things about Jews yet retains the admiration of many on the left, including, notably, leaders of the Women’s March. They have now separated themselves from Farrakhan’s bigotry but not the man himself. He understands. They are doing what Jews want.
To an extent, they are. It has taken some pressure to get Women’s March co-chairs Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour and others to distance themselves from Farrakhan’s views. Yet Mallory, for one, will not condemn the man who holds these views. In this, she has plenty of company. On the stage with Farrakhan at Aretha Franklin’s funeral in September were Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Bill Clinton. Franklin, apparently untroubled by Farrakhan’s Jew hatred, had a friendly relationship with him, and he was at the funeral for that reason. Still, you could not imagine Jackson, Sharpton or Clinton sharing the stage with David Duke.
The Anti-Defamation League reports a surge in anti-Semitic incidents — up nearly 60 percent in 2017. But the numbers are more shocking than they are troubling. More troubling — if unmeasurable — are the casually anti-Semitic statements or associations of figures such as Mallory and Sarsour. In 2012, Sarsour, who is Palestinian American, tweeted: “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.” This might be understandable from a Palestinian point of view, but not her following sentence: “Challenge racism.” The slur that Zionism is racism must come as a surprise to the 135,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel, roughly 25,000 of whom were airlifted between 1984 and 1991.
Comentários