But then she adds this:
We’ve spent the better part of the last year being warned about the dangers of the rise of the alt-right. Even I doubted the power the alt-right apparently wields, which apparently includes the ability to convince a mainstream American publication to publish 4,000 words of anti-Semitic garbage on the eve of a major Jewish holiday. Can they silence the rest of the mainstream media, which reports breathlessly on every headline related to Jews at Breitbart?It is true that, at sundown, many will go offline for two days in order to solemnize the Passover. So, I suppose it really would be proper to say something about it since they won't be able to defend themselves for a couple of days.
With most American Jews signing offline for the next few days in celebration of our freedom from bondage in Egypt, it’s up to the non-Jews working in media to pick up the slack on renouncing this article for what it is.
By the way, if I have any Jewish readers, I looked up whether or not it was appropriate to say "Happy Passover" before writing this post given the details of the underlying story. I was told the right thing to say was Chag Sameach.
So: Chag Sameach. Have a good festival, secure in the knowledge that friends will stand up for you while you're offline.
I don't agree that Politico is mainstream, but that's a minor point.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ms Mandel and with you on the main point.
Eric Hines
I read an article in the very-liberal Jewish Tikkun magazine in the 1980's that there was already a competition for most-oppressed group to favor among leftists that had decided Palestinians were the new tribe to support. I have watched that grow on the left since that time. It's a positional good. It hasn't nothing to do with sorting out justice, it's motive is to be seen as supporting the really really really oppressed. Not that imitation model oppression those others are touting.
ReplyDeleteThat antisemitism from the right must still be out there, because I see their comments on some sites. But I have literally only met one anti-semite who was not liberal, and that was an elderly Pole I met around 1980, who still remembered the "Jewish Communists" who had come in and wiped out his village in 1939.
I get the occasional "International Conspiracy of Jewish Bankers" vibe from all kinds of people from time to time; they're of no particular political bent, just sort of populist and suspicious of Wall Street in a fairly conventional way. In other words, I'd be surprised if they were hostile to a real live Jew in their presence. Jews seem mostly to be an abstraction to them.
ReplyDeleteThere's plenty of reason to criticize Wall Street without bothering to ask how its denizens happen to pray.
ReplyDelete