The Jew-disdaining right is still there.
Like many of my age, I grew up watching Hogan’s Heroes. All of the German officers were played by Jews, and no one was more popular than the beloved Sgt. Schultz. His famous lines of “I know nothing! I saw nothing!” and the like were always played for a good laugh. Unfortunately, the “know nothing” personality did not end with the TV show.
On the surface, one of the most obvious differences between the American left and right is that the left is bound by a straightjacket of ideological boundaries. Someone from the left has a set of automatic views that are not to be crossed, for example:
*Trump is always wrong/bad
*His voters are Neanderthals
*Illegal immigrants have done no wrong and should not be deported
*The U.S. sits on stolen land and was made successful on the backs of slaves
*People can freely change genders
*Climate change is more important than all other issues combined
And on and on. Sometimes there is a crack in which a CNN talking head will give Donald Trump credit for something or an MSNBC slide might show that climate change ain’t happening. But overall, in over 90 percent of the discussions, there is no leaving the boundaries that the left has set for itself. A “panel” discussion on Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes includes men and women of all colors but with identical ideological views. I have never heard a dissenting opinion in all of the times I was obligated to see them on my parents’ TV.
On the right, there generally is more diversity of opinion. I have seen articles that have called into question several of Donald Trump’s appointments—something that you would never see for Obama or Biden selections in a mainstream media source. But even with those on the right being more open-minded, there are still those with agendas. And some of the latter do not like Jews. Oh sure, they couch their sophomoric arguments into anti-Israel language. As I have stated before, Israel is an imperfect country and is subject to any reasonable critique. “Reasonable” means that the criticism is factually true and that the one bringing the goods holds other countries with the same issues to the same level of criticism. The problem we have is that many hold Israel to standards that are unfair or even ridiculous and never call out countries that do the same or worse. As the late Dr. Martin Luther King said, anti-Zionism is antisemitism. The Jew hater goes to bed feeling good about himself. “I have nothing against the Jews! It’s just those Israelis and their genocide or world conquest.” Don’t forget that Hitler used to pose with Jewish children prior to their being sent to Theresienstadt.
Thus, there is a well-known conservative personality who interviewed a pro-China ignoramus masquerading as an expert in history. Our intrepid man of the right described the recently deposed Bashar al-Assad this way: “Why am I supposed to hate Assad? He’s just an eye doctor from London. He protected Christians.” He and his witless companion claimed that it was Israel that was behind the removal of Assad and his replacement with Jew-hating elements of ISIS and Al-Qaeda—a “psy-op” in their words. It was Israel who pushed the U.S. into Iraq and Israel’s forays into Lebanon, instead of bringing hope to the country now free of Hezbollah/Iranian control are another route by which the Jewish state controls the Middle East. Let’s focus on al-Assad who is described as a mild-mannered eye doctor who took great care of his Christian minority. Let’s talk the real al-Assad and not fact-free sound bites:
*While people bleat on about “genocide” with around 40,000 dead in Gaza, many of them being terrorists, the Syrian civil war has left over 600,000 dead. Those barrel bombs dropped on unarmed civilians were dropped by helicopters of Assad’s army.
*Assad enlisted Iran and Russia to prop up his failing Alawite government and facilitated the transfer of huge amounts of weaponry to Hezbollah for the purpose of killing Israeli citizens in the north of the country.
*Our eye doctor may need glasses to find those Christians. The number of Christians in Syria has dropped from 1.5 million prior to the Arab Spring to around 300,000 still there today. Our modern Crusader should know that Israel offers its Christians full rights and is the only country in the region with a growing Christian population.
*A mass grave with 100,000 bodies was discovered recently outside of Damascus, and horror stories abound from those released from Syria’s most notorious Sednaya prison.
So the unfortunate state in which we find ourselves is that a conservative rock star, in order to stick it to Israel, brings a historical know-nothing and turns a butcher of the Syrian people into a quaint eye doctor whose goal in life is to protect Christians. There is no way to fully purge the right of its Jew-haters, male and female, black and white. The left has them, so apparently we need to have them as well. That said, we must stand at attention and be ready to call out anyone whose criticisms of Israel move beyond the reasonable and into the fashionable antisemitism of the day.
No, Israel does not dictate U.S. foreign policy. In many cases, the U.S. has prevented Israel from taking proper military action. If Netanyahu had listened to Biden, both Sinwar and Nasrallah would still be alive today. Israel did not orchestrate the revolution in Syria. Our conservative opinion-maker should hang that hat on Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, as Donald Trump has. Enough with the Jew hatred hiding under the ridiculous critiques of Israel. If you want to hate Jews, go back to your old job with the mainstream media.