I have great respect for anyone who lived through the hell of the Shoah. What I don’t have is great respect for someone like Foxman who engages in needless "shticklach" peppered with "mamaloschen"-Yiddish who purveys a false sense of moral outrage. We saw it last year in "The Passion of the Christ" episode in which Foxman's diatribes simply raised Mel Gibson's half billion take on the patently anti-Semitic film and paid for a new ABC mini-series on a hidden Dutch Jewish holocaust survivor.
This is the same Foxman who lobbied former President Clinton in the last days of his administration to give wealthy songwriter and divorcee Denise Rich her ex-convicted tax evader husband Marc Rich billionaire oil trader in Zug, Switzerland a Presidential pardon . This is the same Foxman who fought fellow Holocaust survivor Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) over bragging rights for the Global Anti-Semitism Awareness/Review Act of 2004 that Lantos and a bi-partisan group if the U.S. Congress had sponsored. So here comes Foxman fresh from Monday's "summit meeting” with an assemblage of Jewish leaders on his new money raising issue of the day for the ADL: the threat of Christian Evangelicals imposing what he called an "exclusionary" view of America as a Christian nation.
Based on what I saw and heard last night, Foxman is an anachronism in his own time. The sooner what passes for the board of the ADL realizes it, the sooner they might begin a search for his successor. That is assuming he will go willingly, but with great retirement benefits.
The ADL "Road Show" speech: Foxman’s talk was laden with heavy handed emphasis on the theme, that there can be no coercion from any profession of a “one true fait,” that is above all others. The shame of this country that is among the most democratic in the world is the emergence in his view of “narrow religious exclusion.”
He argues that the U.S. was not founded under as a country under a Christian doctrine pointing to an arcane Barbary Treaty of 1796 . I always was under the impression was that our Founding Fathers believed in the 18th Century concept of deism and frequently conveyed that using the term Providence.
What Foxman sees as a threat are Christian Evangelicals who profess a Judeo Christian ethos who are in his words “pushing” the Judeo part out of it.
Foxman pays court to his “friend” Ralph Reed former executive director of the Christian Coalition and applauds Evangelical Christian support for Israel as being very important, but wants no conditions such as the Armageddon scenario where Jews are either destroyed in the cataclysmic mythic battle and the remnant recognize the Second Coming of Christ and convert. Reed, according to Foxman, allegedly told him that Evangelicals “can’t” help it because they must “bear witness” and engage in the “profession of faith.”
Foxman cites as examples of this Christian “particularistic view” evidences such as:
• Texas GOP convention approving a resolution stating that America is a Christian nation.
• ADL Poll results that show 56% of persons who indicated that they attend Church at least once a week approved of teaching both “intelligent design” and “science.’
• Federal funding of religious communities who deny employment opportunities to non-Christians or require affidavits that the employee is of a Christian persuasion.
But Foxman cautions his listeners that ‘it is not anti-Semitism, but sincere passionate belief that hopes to “reclaim America for Christ.”
When asked by an audience member during the Q+A following his talk what drove him to take up this cudgel of the threat of Christianizing America, Foxman said it was two things. The coercive proselytizing at the Air Force Academy by Evangelical chaplains and fellow students towards Jews and other non-Jews, including mainstream Christians. The other was the Salvation Army employment questionnaire that asks whether the prospective employee is a professing Christian.
Foxman chastised even fellow Jewish leaders for not signing on to his new “initiative” because “they” said it was risky to confront Christians in a time when Israel needed strong allies. That’s an oblique slap at Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ. But he also chastises the Orthodox community who he alleged supported federal funding of faith based initiatives to obtain grants for religious schools.
He cited the weakening of traditional alliances with the afro American and Hispanic communities in the U.S. in the face of the rapid growth of Christian evangelism. The shrinkage of the federal safety net under successive political administration and change in the composition of Congress has resulted in churches provided welfare and social services. He noted that occurred in the wake of hurricanes of Katrina and Rita this year.
Foxman cites as evidence of threat of religious particularism an ADL poll where: 64% of all respondents and 75% of Church going respondents felt that “religion was under attack” in America
His predilection to use Yiddishisms to make exclamation points in his talk came up with one “bon mot” attributable to his late father. He translated from the Yiddish a pet expression of his late father that meant” beware of religious Cossacks.” What that translated in Foxman’s view was beware all of fundamentalists: Christian, Muslim and Jewish. For what Foxman wants in this country is a protective wall of separation between church and state.
Foxman then delved into the untoward consequences of this emerging threat to the Jewish community from rampant fundamentalism citing results of an April 2005 poll taken of Americans by the ADL, to wit:
• 14% of those American polled hold anti-Semitic beliefs, which Foxman says is the equivalent of 35 million people in this country;
• 33% believe that American Jews are more loyal to Israel-according to Foxman one of the “oldest anti-Semitic canards;”
• 30% believed in Deicide-the Jews killed Christ; and,
• 70% believed that Jews had too much control of the business world, wall street, Hollywood, media, etc.
He went ballistic about the allegations from the Christian evangelical community that there’s a “war on Christmas,” probably in his view, because “Hanukkah and Christmas occur on the same date, December 25th.” He really tore into a press conference by a group calling itself 'Jews Against The Anti Defamation Of Christmas' (JAACD). Foxman didn’t state it but one of those involved was Jewish comedian, Jackie Mason.
What is all this about? Why engage in an anachronistic diversion? I think a number of cynics think it’s all about the money trail. Scare the unwary donors and that will shake loose contributions, maybe.
The Puzzlintg and Disturbing Q+A: After an hour of Foxman’s rants and tear jerking bathos, then came Q+A. An ex Air Force officer stood up and discussed the importance of Foxman’s remarks about pilots checking out co-pilots about “come to Jesus” stuff before missions.
A woman asked about Pope Pius XII and whether the Vatican really did enough to save Jews during the Shoah. Foxman may inquire about opening the Vatican archives on that issue with the Pope Benedict XVI given his imminent departure for Rome to meet with the new pontiff.
We heard about Christmas as a federal holiday-a tradition in this majority Christian country according to Foxman.
Foxman joked about Cecil de Mille creating the tradition of “ten commandments” tablets in public county courthouses.
When asked about Jimmy Carter’s latest book he said the only one he read was carter’s “Blood of Abraham” about the millennial-like Arab Israel struggle when Carter takes the wrong seemingly anti-Semitic views, despite his public persona of being a renowned humanitarian.
Judy Block a friend from neighboring Westport, Connecticut was earnestly puzzled by Foxman’s response to a question she posed, because he didn’t understand it and he didn’t explain the seeming inconsistency in his position. Block, who is politically conservative, was offended by frequent references to Jesus by Franklin Graham, son of Evangelical preacher the renowned Billy Graham during in invocation for President’s Bush’s first inauguration in 2001. She contended that she had no problem with references to G_d because in her view it was “all inclusive” for Christians, Jews and Muslims. She thought Graham’s remarks during the first Bush inauguration divisive. Foxman noted things that most American didn’t object to such as “In God we Trust “on our currency and “a moment of silence” in which you could make whatever individual profession of faith you wanted.
Foxman’s response was puzzling to Block because he didn’t object to what occurred in the First Bush Inauguration as imposition of Christian exclusionary doctrine that he railed at during his Fairfield lecture. After all, as he said if Joe Lieberman, my Connecticut U.S. Senator at a possible future Presidential inauguration might speak of “the God of Moses.” So what Block got from Foxman was sort of a “sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, also” response. Foxman effectively blew an opportunity to make his lecture point.
Young Ethiopian Coptic Christian Zionist, Laban Seyoum who asked Foxman about FBI profiling of Jews for jobs. Foxman said that if Jews have relatives in Israel or travel there frequently they are considered “security risks” and cited intelligence clearances of Jewish state department employees being withdrawn.
My time at bat, I chose to go back to a thin reed of a comment that he made early in his talk about “confronting Islamic Radical triumphalism.”
I started by suggesting that his talk was a diversion from the real threat: Radical Islam, not only abroad, but here in America. I cited the study released and published in the Jerusalem Post by Yehudit Barsky of the American Jewish Committee citing that 80% of American Mosques were “radicalized.”
I pointed out the comments of Saudi Prince Talal who owns 5.5 % of the voting stock of Fox News calling his new "friend," Rupert Murdoch and getting headlines changed that poverty rather than radical Islam was behind the recent French riots.
I noted there were the libel actions and countersuit by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld in the U.S. Southern District Court in Manhattan involved Saudi billionaire and terror financier, Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz. I cited the current libel action brought by the Islamic Society of Boston against several defendants including the David project, Fox News affiliate WFXT Channel 25, Steven Emerson of The Investigative Project and the Boston Herald.
My challenge to him what was he going to do about it.
What Foxman said was, “that’s a speech and talk for another time’ " I think it’s in one of the chapters” of his one and only book “Never Again that he admitted to his audience that a hired writer ghosted for him. But he also said, “Go check our website.”
The ADL doesn't "Get It" but the IFCJ does.Foxman doesn’t get it and with the exception of several in the audience who do get it, most were totally oblivious.
Oblivious because Abe Foxman and the ADL doesn’t understand the context of those anti-Semitism incidents that the ADL reports and publishes. That many of the incidents of anti-Semitism on college campuses are actions of supporters of Radical Islam. Foxman, as my friend Judy Block said who attended this “lecture” by the ADL national director, doesn’t understand the context of what changes have occurred in the U.S. that have given rise of the Christian Evangelical movement. He doesn’t understand that many former allies in the liberal Protestant denominations have provided venues for some of the worst religious anti-Semites and enemies of the State of Israel.
Someone who does “get it” and whom I’ve had the pleasure of heard speak at an IFCJ awards dinner in Washington, DC honoring my own U.S. Connecticut senator, Joe Lieberman-whom Foxman doesn’t rate highly by the way, is Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein.
Eckstein knows the friendship and the power of the Evangelical community and their recognition of the Radical Islamist threat here in America.
In an opinion piece in The Jewish Week, entitled “Why Criticize Israel’s Strongest Allues?" Eckstein said:
“It therefore confuses and I’ll admit, angers me that Jewish leaders who are perfectly comfortable seeking rapprochement with those who have inflicted harm on the Jewish people cannot even be civil to the faith group that today represents the greatest allies of the Jewish people in the battle against anti-Semitism and the struggle for a peaceful and secure Israel.”
So yes, Abe Foxman engaged in a diversion in his talk at Fairfield University away from what a number of us believe is the clear and present danger of Radical Islam driving many of the anti-Semitic incidents that the ADL reports. Unfortunately for many Jews and the ADL, Foxman is lost in a time warp somewhere in the stretch between the 1950’s to 1990’s focused on the threat of Evangelical Christian “exclusionary views.” So both he and the ADL are unfortunately for American Jewry an anachronism. But I believe that Rabbi Eckstein and the IFCJ that Eckstein founded ‘gets it” because the organization has behind it millions of pro-Israel Christian Zionists who have spent millions saving Soviet and Ethiopian Jews and defending Israel and the Jewish people.
Foxman at Fairfield University; an Anachronism engaged in Diversion
By Jerry Gordon former U.S. military intelligence officer, writer, activist who lives in Connecticut
Abe Foxman national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
appeared at Fairfield University in Connecticut Wednesday night and gave a lecture entitled “American Attitudes towards Jews in America.” Foxman is a Holocaust survivor, hidden by his parents with a Catholic family in Vilna, Lithuania in 1941, baptized as Catholic by his care-giver and nanny protector and miraculously reunited with his death camp survivor parents, at the end of the war. He and his family came from DP camps in Europe to the U.S. in 1950. He's a graduate of CCNY and New York University Law School. He has been an official and ultimately the national director of the ADL for more than a generation-25 years.
Speaking before a large crowd of students and mainly older Jewish adults at a Catholic Jesuit university Foxman was introduced by Rev. Jeffrey P. von Arx, S.J, Fairfield University President, who gave his brief bio including the Holocaust survivor information.
But the reality of Foxman these days is somewhat different and controversial. The “road show” talk he gave was jarring and as I said to him publicly during a Q+A session following his talk a diversion from the real threat to Christians and Jews in America: radical Islam.
I have great respect for anyone who lived through the hell of the Shoah. What I don’t have is great respect for someone like Foxman who engages in needless "shticklach" peppered with "mamaloschen"-Yiddish who purveys a false sense of moral outrage. We saw it last year in "The Passion of the Christ" episode in which Foxman's diatribes simply raised Mel Gibson's half billion take on the patently anti-Semitic film and paid for a new ABC mini-series on a hidden Dutch Jewish holocaust survivor.
This is the same Foxman who lobbied former President Clinton in the last days of his administration to give wealthy songwriter and divorcee Denise Rich her ex-convicted tax evader husband Marc Rich billionaire oil trader in Zug, Switzerland a Presidential pardon . This is the same Foxman who fought fellow Holocaust survivor Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) over bragging rights for the Global Anti-Semitism Awareness/Review Act of 2004 that Lantos and a bi-partisan group if the U.S. Congress had sponsored. So here comes Foxman fresh from Monday's "summit meeting” with an assemblage of Jewish leaders on his new money raising issue of the day for the ADL: the threat of Christian Evangelicals imposing what he called an "exclusionary" view of America as a Christian nation.
Based on what I saw and heard last night, Foxman is an anachronism in his own time. The sooner what passes for the board of the ADL realizes it, the sooner they might begin a search for his successor. That is assuming he will go willingly, but with great retirement benefits.
The ADL "Road Show" speech: Foxman’s talk was laden with heavy handed emphasis on the theme, that there can be no coercion from any profession of a “one true fait,” that is above all others. The shame of this country that is among the most democratic in the world is the emergence in his view of “narrow religious exclusion.”
He argues that the U.S. was not founded under as a country under a Christian doctrine pointing to an arcane Barbary Treaty of 1796 . I always was under the impression was that our Founding Fathers believed in the 18th Century concept of deism and frequently conveyed that using the term Providence.
What Foxman sees as a threat are Christian Evangelicals who profess a Judeo Christian ethos who are in his words “pushing” the Judeo part out of it.
Foxman pays court to his “friend” Ralph Reed former executive director of the Christian Coalition and applauds Evangelical Christian support for Israel as being very important, but wants no conditions such as the Armageddon scenario where Jews are either destroyed in the cataclysmic mythic battle and the remnant recognize the Second Coming of Christ and convert. Reed, according to Foxman, allegedly told him that Evangelicals “can’t” help it because they must “bear witness” and engage in the “profession of faith.”
Foxman cites as examples of this Christian “particularistic view” evidences such as:
• Texas GOP convention approving a resolution stating that America is a Christian nation.
• ADL Poll results that show 56% of persons who indicated that they attend Church at least once a week approved of teaching both “intelligent design” and “science.’
• Federal funding of religious communities who deny employment opportunities to non-Christians or require affidavits that the employee is of a Christian persuasion.
But Foxman cautions his listeners that ‘it is not anti-Semitism, but sincere passionate belief that hopes to “reclaim America for Christ.”
When asked by an audience member during the Q+A following his talk what drove him to take up this cudgel of the threat of Christianizing America, Foxman said it was two things. The coercive proselytizing at the Air Force Academy by Evangelical chaplains and fellow students towards Jews and other non-Jews, including mainstream Christians. The other was the Salvation Army employment questionnaire that asks whether the prospective employee is a professing Christian.
Foxman chastised even fellow Jewish leaders for not signing on to his new “initiative” because “they” said it was risky to confront Christians in a time when Israel needed strong allies. That’s an oblique slap at Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ. But he also chastises the Orthodox community who he alleged supported federal funding of faith based initiatives to obtain grants for religious schools.
He cited the weakening of traditional alliances with the afro American and Hispanic communities in the U.S. in the face of the rapid growth of Christian evangelism. The shrinkage of the federal safety net under successive political administration and change in the composition of Congress has resulted in churches provided welfare and social services. He noted that occurred in the wake of hurricanes of Katrina and Rita this year.
Foxman cites as evidence of threat of religious particularism an ADL poll where: 64% of all respondents and 75% of Church going respondents felt that “religion was under attack” in America
His predilection to use Yiddishisms to make exclamation points in his talk came up with one “bon mot” attributable to his late father. He translated from the Yiddish a pet expression of his late father that meant” beware of religious Cossacks.” What that translated in Foxman’s view was beware all of fundamentalists: Christian, Muslim and Jewish. For what Foxman wants in this country is a protective wall of separation between church and state.
Foxman then delved into the untoward consequences of this emerging threat to the Jewish community from rampant fundamentalism citing results of an April 2005 poll taken of Americans by the ADL, to wit:
• 14% of those American polled hold anti-Semitic beliefs, which Foxman says is the equivalent of 35 million people in this country;
• 33% believe that American Jews are more loyal to Israel-according to Foxman one of the “oldest anti-Semitic canards;”
• 30% believed in Deicide-the Jews killed Christ; and,
• 70% believed that Jews had too much control of the business world, wall street, Hollywood, media, etc.
He went ballistic about the allegations from the Christian evangelical community that there’s a “war on Christmas,” probably in his view, because “Hanukkah and Christmas occur on the same date, December 25th.” He really tore into a press conference by a group calling itself 'Jews Against The Anti Defamation Of Christmas' (JAACD). Foxman didn’t state it but one of those involved was Jewish comedian, Jackie Mason.
What is all this about? Why engage in an anachronistic diversion? I think a number of cynics think it’s all about the money trail. Scare the unwary donors and that will shake loose contributions, maybe.
The Puzzlintg and Disturbing Q+A: After an hour of Foxman’s rants and tear jerking bathos, then came Q+A. An ex Air Force officer stood up and discussed the importance of Foxman’s remarks about pilots checking out co-pilots about “come to Jesus” stuff before missions.
A woman asked about Pope Pius XII and whether the Vatican really did enough to save Jews during the Shoah. Foxman may inquire about opening the Vatican archives on that issue with the Pope Benedict XVI given his imminent departure for Rome to meet with the new pontiff.
We heard about Christmas as a federal holiday-a tradition in this majority Christian country according to Foxman.
Foxman joked about Cecil de Mille creating the tradition of “ten commandments” tablets in public county courthouses.
When asked about Jimmy Carter’s latest book he said the only one he read was carter’s “Blood of Abraham” about the millennial-like Arab Israel struggle when Carter takes the wrong seemingly anti-Semitic views, despite his public persona of being a renowned humanitarian.
Judy Block a friend from neighboring Westport, Connecticut was earnestly puzzled by Foxman’s response to a question she posed, because he didn’t understand it and he didn’t explain the seeming inconsistency in his position. Block, who is politically conservative, was offended by frequent references to Jesus by Franklin Graham, son of Evangelical preacher the renowned Billy Graham during in invocation for President’s Bush’s first inauguration in 2001. She contended that she had no problem with references to G_d because in her view it was “all inclusive” for Christians, Jews and Muslims. She thought Graham’s remarks during the first Bush inauguration divisive. Foxman noted things that most American didn’t object to such as “In God we Trust “on our currency and “a moment of silence” in which you could make whatever individual profession of faith you wanted.
Foxman’s response was puzzling to Block because he didn’t object to what occurred in the First Bush Inauguration as imposition of Christian exclusionary doctrine that he railed at during his Fairfield lecture. After all, as he said if Joe Lieberman, my Connecticut U.S. Senator at a possible future Presidential inauguration might speak of “the God of Moses.” So what Block got from Foxman was sort of a “sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, also” response. Foxman effectively blew an opportunity to make his lecture point.
Young Ethiopian Coptic Christian Zionist, Laban Seyoum who asked Foxman about FBI profiling of Jews for jobs. Foxman said that if Jews have relatives in Israel or travel there frequently they are considered “security risks” and cited intelligence clearances of Jewish state department employees being withdrawn.
My time at bat, I chose to go back to a thin reed of a comment that he made early in his talk about “confronting Islamic Radical triumphalism.”
I started by suggesting that his talk was a diversion from the real threat: Radical Islam, not only abroad, but here in America. I cited the study released and published in the Jerusalem Post by Yehudit Barsky of the American Jewish Committee citing that 80% of American Mosques were “radicalized.”
I pointed out the comments of Saudi Prince Talal who owns 5.5 % of the voting stock of Fox News calling his new "friend," Rupert Murdoch and getting headlines changed that poverty rather than radical Islam was behind the recent French riots.
I noted there were the libel actions and countersuit by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld in the U.S. Southern District Court in Manhattan involved Saudi billionaire and terror financier, Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz. I cited the current libel action brought by the Islamic Society of Boston against several defendants including the David project, Fox News affiliate WFXT Channel 25, Steven Emerson of The Investigative Project and the Boston Herald.
My challenge to him what was he going to do about it.
What Foxman said was, “that’s a speech and talk for another time’ " I think it’s in one of the chapters” of his one and only book “Never Again that he admitted to his audience that a hired writer ghosted for him. But he also said, “Go check our website.”
The ADL doesn't "Get It" but the IFCJ does.Foxman doesn’t get it and with the exception of several in the audience who do get it, most were totally oblivious.
Oblivious because Abe Foxman and the ADL doesn’t understand the context of those anti-Semitism incidents that the ADL reports and publishes. That many of the incidents of anti-Semitism on college campuses are actions of supporters of Radical Islam. Foxman, as my friend Judy Block said who attended this “lecture” by the ADL national director, doesn’t understand the context of what changes have occurred in the U.S. that have given rise of the Christian Evangelical movement. He doesn’t understand that many former allies in the liberal Protestant denominations have provided venues for some of the worst religious anti-Semites and enemies of the State of Israel.
Someone who does “get it” and whom I’ve had the pleasure of heard speak at an IFCJ awards dinner in Washington, DC honoring my own U.S. Connecticut senator, Joe Lieberman-whom Foxman doesn’t rate highly by the way, is Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein.
Eckstein knows the friendship and the power of the Evangelical community and their recognition of the Radical Islamist threat here in America.
In an opinion piece in The Jewish Week, entitled “Why Criticize Israel’s Strongest Allues?" Eckstein said:
“It therefore confuses and I’ll admit, angers me that Jewish leaders who are perfectly comfortable seeking rapprochement with those who have inflicted harm on the Jewish people cannot even be civil to the faith group that today represents the greatest allies of the Jewish people in the battle against anti-Semitism and the struggle for a peaceful and secure Israel.”
So yes, Abe Foxman engaged in a diversion in his talk at Fairfield University away from what a number of us believe is the clear and present danger of Radical Islam driving many of the anti-Semitic incidents that the ADL reports. Unfortunately for many Jews and the ADL, Foxman is lost in a time warp somewhere in the stretch between the 1950’s to 1990’s focused on the threat of Evangelical Christian “exclusionary views.” So both he and the ADL are unfortunately for American Jewry an anachronism. But I believe that Rabbi Eckstein and the IFCJ that Eckstein founded ‘gets it” because the organization has behind it millions of pro-Israel Christian Zionists who have spent millions saving Soviet and Ethiopian Jews and defending Israel and the Jewish people.
Posted by Jerry Gordon at December 8, 2005 10:26 PM