Let’s imagine you are a rabbi irritated by certain aspects of Fox News. You write letters and complain after Glenn Beck attacks George Soros saying that he collaborated with Nazis in Hungary during the Holocaust. You write letters and complain and have meetings after Roger Ailes calls National Public Radio a bunch of Nazis after they censored Juan Williams.

But nothing really changes. The Fox news personalities continue to invoke the Holocaust and Nazism to attack their enemies. Ailes even says the complaints are from just a group of left-wing rabbis who don’t think anyone should use invoke the Holocaust in partisan political discussions on the air.

What’s a rabbi to do?

I am not sure. But a group of rabbis, including leaders of various synagogue and seminary movements, arranged a full page ad this past Thursday, UN Holocaust Rememberance Day, in the Wall Street Journal, the business newspaper that is controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s corporation, which also owns Fox News.

The ad, titled “Rabbis to Rupert Murdoch: Sanction Glenn Beck” was an open letter that explained that the undersigned rabbis, with a variety of political views, were deeply offended by Ailes statement, and stated that Fox diminishes the memories and meaning of Holocaust when it uses it to discreditany organization or individual Beck or Ailes Disagrees with.

The ad was signed by 400 rabbis, including Rabbis Yoffie, Wernick, Ridberg, Nevins, Ehrenkrantz, Weinberg-Dreyfus, and Artson.

Effective? Time will tell.

About the author

larry

25 Comments

  • To actually say it is wrong to mention the Holocaust in terms of partisan politics is naive at best, supporting evil and thereby enabling evil to prosper at worst. I think it is obvious the latter is what is going on. These aren’t radical rabbis. These are intelligent observant and tuned in rabbis who understand history, and rhetoric when they hear it. WAKE UP Fox news, and everyone who doesn’t see, or doesn’t want to see the writing on the wall!

    • I am not an observant Jew but I will die to defend the Jewish faith and Israel. I have become so disgusted with those liberal jews (they don’t deserve a capital letter) that I now call myself an Israeli! Rabbi means teacher. I was a teacher and I have very little respect for most teachers today. I have NO RESPECT for THOSE teachers. I’d pick Fox News anytime over them. I will never support them and hope that there are some intelligent Jews left to shut out their unintelligent babbling!

  • You have got to be f***ing kidding me. Your left wing news stations all invoke the Holocaust all the time and no one says crap. This is an attempt to silence someone they disagree with plain and simple. And wrong.

    • Have you seen Glenn Beck’s show? Occasionally (albeit very rarely) a left-winged person will invoke the Holocaust, but Glenn Beck violates Godwin’s Law many, many times an episode.

      Also, I think you may have missed the part where it said that Rabbis with a variety of political views signed.

  • This is a dumb post.

    The context is that Beck, one of the most proudly ignorant and sensationalist personalities on television, broadcast a special on the nine people poised to do the most damage to America.

    Eight of these nine were Jewish.

    You do the math.

    And next time, do the research.

    Also, here‘s a funnier explanation of what’s wrong with allowing paranoid nationalists free license to exploit the mass genocide of Jews for whatever reason they want to.

  • Check out the kinder, gentler, more Americanized form of conservative anti-semitism that’s kept alive and well by Glenn Beck and Fox News.

    Watch the video of Beck’s broadcast for yourself and see watcha think.

  • Who are the noted orthodox rabbis?

    I doubt any are noted. 99% of those Rabbis are reconstructionist to conservative.

    These “Rabbis” see Glen Beck or anything not liberal as a threat to their main goal.

    COMPLETE Assimilation of the Jewish people.

    Talk about Holocaust.

    • A total slip up obviously. That would be way too bltnaat for anyone to pull off, not to mention Beck isn’t a racist. Jesus, when are you freaking Libs going to stop using you are a racist! as your fallback attack and find something of SUBSTANCE to hang your hats on; I mean REALLY!PS I’m sorry, but to be totally honest, I actually got a kick out of it when it came onto the screen, and I’ve never been accused of being a racist (except by people like you who have nothing else to throw at me). In fact, my admission of seeing the humor in it would indicate that, b/c any Lib (esp. like you) would try and feign righteous indignation to cover up any slight tinge of humor that is obviously there b/c of their white guilt and PC-ness. Get a sense of humor and stop trying to make something out of nothing. I showed it to a couple black friends and even THEY got a kick out of it, saying Oh man, that poor white dude is going to catch so much sh for this! (with a laugh).So lighten up, you big weenie! Stop taking yourself and every frickin’ detail of the world so seriously.

  • F*** George Soros, that Capo MFer, first and foremost. He’s as Jewish as Trotsky was. And I feel just fine as a Jew saying that.

    And until these Rabbis send a letter to MSNBC and CNN, I don’t want to hear it, because I’ve seen anti-Semitism on those shows that would make Goebbels proud.

    Glenn Beck is an idiot. However, the suggestion that 8 of 9 people most dangerous to America happen to be Jewish does not correlate to anti-Semitism. Maybe it just means that there are a lot of meshuggeneh Jews out there that are out of step with America and it’s founding principles.

    My family escaped a country because of Communism and it’s incredibly negative effects on Jews. Does it make Communism any less evil given that most of the first Communists were Jews (who game up their Jewish identities, mind you)? No. They were POS and they are now. Communism is evil and it’s a threat to America and I don’t care what race, ethnicity, or religion its adherents are. This is an ideological battle not a religious one.

    So Glen Beck, these Rabbis, and every American Jew trapped in their entrenched beliefs can all kiss my ass. I guess I must be a Jewish Anti-Semite. Why not, the left has called me every other name. Now go defend Al Sharpton since he’s such a lover of the Jews and watch the Daily Show for your next orders.

  • Why are Jews allowing themselves to be used as political pawns?

    Media Matters today blamed the Egyptian unrest on AIPAC influenced policies…in other words… The Jews.

    Media Matters is of course a Soros funded project, Jewish Funds For Justices who sponsored this letter to Beck/Fox. That both Soros, and Media Matters are leading a boycott against Beck is not a coincidence.

    So why are Jewish leaders allowing themselves to be used as pawns in such a manner? Why didn’t these same Jews speak out against the use of Hitler rhetoric by Move-On, or an other Left outlets? Why are they aligning with secularist movements to deliver this message, supposedly on behalf of the Jewish community? See the problem?

    Finally…Beck did not criticize or target Soros or any others as Jews. Their Jewish ancestry is trivial in light of their anti-religious stance, and Anti-Zionism. So the smear that Beck has a “Jewish problem”, should not be promoted. It’s false. He opposes a Progressive ideology – and it’s not his fault that radical extreme Left-think evolved from rejectionist Jews, and attracted many as well. This is worse then the Left picking out Jewish names from a Neo-Con lineup. Beck is actually talking history, and relating the context to issues that require discourse related to the Holocaust, and National Socialism. Why fear such discourse?

    • Glenn Beck isn’t talking history, and he isn’t talking about issues relevant to the holocaust. If he was, people wouldn’t have a problem with this. He compares Obama’s policies (the public option, for example), to Nazi Germany. He says that teaching children about global warming is similar to what the Hitler Youth did.

      No, Glenn Beck isn’t talking history, he’s just consistently invoking Godwin.

      • And he’s wrong for doing so. Just as the people who indoctrinate (not teach) children about global warming are wrong too. There is a difference after all. In the FSU, my parents sang odes to Stalin, Lenin, and the rest of the evil bastards. Here, we’ve seen videos of at least 3 separate groups of public school children taught to sing odes to Obama. Is drawing similarities to that forbidden or just frowned upon nowadays? I can’t tell since the New Tone Period was enacted after Sarah Palin led that Tea Party member, oops, incoherent Anarchist with liberal tendencies to shoot Ms. Giffords.

        • Global warming is a fact. You cannot indoctrinate people about facts. If children are taught facts in school, I have no problem with this. And the “ode to Obama” thing is creepy. I probably wouldn’t compare it to Hitler (as Obama’s policies and Hitler’s policies are quite different), but it’s still creepy.

          And the Gabriel Giffords thing is an utter red Herring, so I’ll just say this: nobody is directly blaming Sarah Palin for that, Loughner’s political affiliations are unclear, and he’s obviously insane anyways.

          • “Global warming is a fact.”

            OK. You guys keep telling yourselves that. 🙂

            “And the “ode to Obama” thing is creepy.”

            Good. We agree on something.

            “nobody is directly blaming Sarah Palin for that”

            Anymore. As soon as it happened, it was all the rage. Until the profile feel apart that is. Could you imagine if this guy actually shared some beliefs with Palin or the Tea Party, you’d all still be all over it. There would be calls for her head. I guess no one came out and said “She is directly to blame!” but it certainly didn’t stop Jewlicious’ own Rabbi Yonah from tweeting numerous times questioning her guilt. Start at the link below and head up: http://twitter.com/#!/RabbiYonah/status/23999547680235520

            And he’s not even THAT political. Imagine what the Daily Kos or even Huffpo crowd was posting. I can go back and pull up quotes by lefties in the media too if you need. Or maybe we’re arguing semantics here?

            Anyway, the fact that liberals are freaking out over people being compared to Nazis is quite laughable after 8 years of Bush=Hitler allegations. But since 2 wrongs don’t make a right, I refrain from doing so myself, but cry me a river, really.

  • I obviously don’t approve of Bush = Hitler analogies, and those were far less common, and most important, not supported by any party.

    But I digress.

    Anyways, if you’d like I can prove to you that Global Warming is a fact.

    I’ll just direct you to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming

    And if you don’t trust wikipedia, check it’s references.

  • “I obviously don’t approve of Bush = Hitler analogies, and those were far less common, and most important, not supported by any party.”

    Far less common? You have got to be kidding me! Anyway, you can believe whatever you like. I know what I saw and still see when it comes to the ample amount of Godwin’s Law (Rep. Cohen comes to mind most recently) and the ample amount of anti-Semitism from mainstream leftist sites, orgs, and politicians. Far more than I have seen from the right and growing.

    “Anyways, if you’d like I can prove to you that Global Warming is a fact.”

    Let’s just be clear. I am assuming you are saying that AGW or Anthropogenic Global Warming is a fact? That’s what I’m arguing isn’t, and not by a long shot. Does the name James Hansen ring a bell?

    Of course the globe warms and cools. It’s been doing that for ages, long before humans were here as well, and it will continue to do that.

    But if you are indoctrinating kids to believe that AGW is a fact, then you are wrong and guilty and should be called out on it. The science is NOT settled nor is there any concensus to claim it as a fact. Another year or two and this myth will die like so many others that use fear to pursue an agenda.

  • It would be good if everyone could read this article. My point stands. If you are going to go after someone, go after everyone, or you look like you have an agenda, which they obviously do.

  • Twitter reports out of Egypt describe paranoia that youth protestors were trained to dissent in the US by “the Jews”.

    Likewise, the Left viewing criticism of Soros as an attack on “the Jews” also comes from the same prejudice mindset, where people speak of Jews not for their actions, and individuality, but as a caricature of a group.

    You see, when a Jew describes his wartime years during the Holocaust as the best years of his life, and credits work under the Nazis as influential, all as a positive – then it puts another spin on the situation. If the same Jew is a committed Universalist, who has rejected his religion, and reinvented himself, it’s not trivial. To then use his Jewish ancestry to defend him, or to claim he’s being targeted as a Jew, well…that smacks of someone who wants to objectify Jewishness, and who can’t view Soros as anything but a one dimensional caricature of a Jew.

  • update: several of the organizations quoted in the ad have written op-eds claiming they didn’t support it.

    soros is blaming israel for egypt’s unrest. rabbis are silent.

  • How any Jew can support or defend Soros is beyond me. What’s even more ironic is that many leftist Jews dislike him but work or support orgs that he directly funds.

  • Really? I’d say it was totally expected.

    Meanwhile:
    Holocaust Scholar Quoted in Anti-Glenn Beck Letter Criticizes the Campaign as one-sided & political http://ow.ly/3Qf8E