Oy Vey! 400 Rabbis Call Glenn Beck Trayfe; Demands Fox “News” Rein Him In
Reported by Aunty Em - January 27, 2011 -
In the Hebrew and Yiddish languages the opposite of “kosher” is “trayfe.” In the English language the opposite of “truth” is “Glenn Beck.” Putting its money where its mouth is, Jewish Funds for Justice is spending $100,000 to publish in today’s Wall Street Journal (owned by News Corp) an open letter signed by 400 rabbis demanding News Corp owner Rupert Murdock sanction Beck and force Roger Ailes, head honcho at Fox “News”, to apologize for insensitive comments about Jews and the Holocaust.
The controversy goes back to Beck’s 3-day smear of philanthropist George Soros, in which he called Soros “The Puppet Master,” pulling the strings behind the scenes to radically transform America into a Communist, or Marxist, or Socialist, or Fascist state. During these programs Beck vilified Soros with barely concealed anti-Semitism and made the outrageous claim that Soros collaborated with the Nazis in Nazi-controlled Hungary:
Here's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps. And I am certainly not saying that George Soros enjoyed that, even had a choice. I mean, he's 14 years old. He was surviving. So I'm not making a judgment. That's between him and God.
The outcry against this demonstrably false statement was immediate and sustained. JFfJ had previously called on Fox “News” to fire Beck, but with this open letter to Murdock it has upped the stakes by including Roger Ailes in the denunciation, along with Beck. Ailes found himself in hot water with two comments in an interview with The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz. After the firing of Juan Williams, he compared National Public Radio with Nazis and said that “left-wing rabbis” make it hard to use the word “Holocaust” on air.
The open letter reads, in part:
In the charged political climate in the current civic debate, much is tolerated, and much is ignored or dismissed. But you diminish the memory and meaning of the Holocaust when you use it to discredit any individual or organization you disagree with. That is what Fox News has done in recent weeks, and it is not only "left-wing rabbis" who think so.Abe Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, a child survivor of the Holocaust, described Beck's attack on George Soros as "not only offensive, but horrific, over-the-top, and out-of-line." Commentary magazine said that "Beck's denunciation of him [Soros] is marred by ignorance and offensive innuendo." Elan Steinberg, vice president of The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, called Mr. Beck's accusations "monstrous." Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, called them "beyond repugnant." And Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University, says Beck is using traditional anti-Semitic imagery.
"I haven't heard anything like this on television or radio -- and I've been following this kind of stuff," Lipstadt said. "I've been in the sewers of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial more often than I've wanted."
It remains to be seen whether Fox “News” will respond to these demands. Up until now the so-called news network has defended Beck. However, as public anger grows, Murdock will find himself backed into a much tighter corner. He will basically have three choices: 1). He can acknowledge the complaints and say he’ll take action; 2). He can ignore this open letter, as he did with with JFfJ’s 10,000 signature petition; 3). He can defend his people and dig himself a deeper hole. What we can be assured of is that this isn’t the last we hear of Beck, Ailes, and the meshuga Fox “News.”
