What Is Anti-Semitism?

Bernard Avishai

From his blog -- http://bernardavishai.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-jewish-problemand-ours.html
Tuesday, January 29, 2008

In 1963, the young editor of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz, wrote a strangely confessional article (the first intimation of what, full-blown, would become his style), which he called “My Negro Problem—and Ours.” Its disquieting point, made the year of the March on Washington, was that too much hatred attached to race for integration ever to succeed. Podhoretz offered himself as evidence, confessing to the fear, envy and contempt with which he had grown up in Brooklyn under the siege of “Negro gangs.” Those streets still seemed to him world-historical ground: “There is a fight, they win and we retreat, half whimpering, half with bravado. My first nauseating experience with cowardice, and my first appalled realization that there are people in the world who do not seem to be afraid of anything, who act as though they have nothing to lose.”

New York, January 23, 2007 – Religious leaders from many faith traditions are expressing outrage at recent political tactics in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.

Recent emails, blogs and one cable news program about Sen. Barack Obama's religious upbringing prompted several religious leaders to speak out against such divisive politics. The stories suggested Obama had attended a radical Muslim madrasa school as a child.

"We are writing to deplore this despicable tactic," said the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, and eight other leaders. "We have had enough of the slash and burn politics calculated to divide us as children of God," said the leaders today in an open letter to the religious community (complete text below).

Nine Jewish Leaders Condemn "Hateful" E-mails Regarding Obama and Religion

"The leaders of nine Jewish groups released an open letter on Tuesday condemning what they called 'hateful e-mails' that they said spread lies about Senator Barack Obama’s religious beliefs and his intentions." As The New York Times (Jan. 18, 2008) explains, "[t]he anonymous e-mail messages have circulated for months, saying that Mr. Obama is a Muslim and carried a copy of the Koran when he was sworn in at the United States Senate." These statements are false. As the article notes, Obama is a Christian and a longtime member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Campaign downplays his connection during boyhood in Indonesia
By Paul Watson
L. A. Times March 16, 2007
From the Baltimore Sun
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- As a boy in Indonesia, Barack Obama crisscrossed the religious divide. At the local primary school, he prayed in thanks to a Catholic saint. In the neighborhood mosque, he bowed to Allah.

Having a personal background in Christianity and Islam might seem useful for an aspiring U.S. president in an age when Islamic nations and radical groups are key national security and foreign policy issues. But a connection with Islam is untrod territory for presidential politics.

FEAR FACTOR

Forward/ Editoria
January 31, 2008

When the dust settles, the uproar over Barack Obama’s religious beliefs
will have taught us little about the candidate and his loyalties that we
don’t already know. If we look closely, however, we can learn a great
deal about American Jews and their anxieties. More pointedly, we can
penetrate the mystery of the power of the so-called Jewish lobby.

As most Americans have heard by now, rumors flying around the Internet
suggest that the Illinois senator is secretly a radical Muslim. It’s
rumored that he took his oath of office on a Quran, that he was educated

Philadelphia Inquirer, September 9, 2007
Op/Ed column:

'Anti-Semitic' label curbs talk about Israel

By Michael Smerconish

[Michael Smerconish is a Philadelphia-based radio host and regular Op/Ed columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer who has also filled in for Bill O'Reilly on The Radio Factor and Glenn Beck on his CNN Headline News television program.

[Smerconish is an outspoken critic of "political correctness" in society and in the war on terrorism and has written two books on the subject:
* 2004 - Flying Blind: How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11

Scrutiny Increases for a Group Advocating for Muslims in U.S.

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
NY Times, March 14 , 2007

With violence across the Middle East fixing Islam smack at the center of the American political debate, an organization partly financed by donors closely identified with wealthy Persian Gulf governments has emerged as the most vocal advocate for American Muslims — and an object of wide suspicion.
The group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, defines its mission as spreading the understanding of Islam and protecting civil liberties. Its officers appear frequently on television and are often quoted in newspapers, and its director has met with President Bush. Some 500,000 people receive the group’s daily e-mail newsletter.

Dear friends,

One of the tactics that has been used by some elements of the official structures of American Jewish organizations has been to attempt to "excommunicate" some critics of Israel by calling them "self-hating Jews" or "enablers of anti-Semitism."

I will take up the implications of the "self-hating Jew" epithet in another letter. On the other accusation, there was recently a firestorm when the American Jewish Committee attacked a number of progressive Jews as enablers of anti-Semitism. In response there has come a wave of civil-liberties-style criticism of the AJCom for these smears.