Israel Matzav

Beck unsubstantiated?

I had the video of Glenn Beck's takedown of George Soros open all day on Thursday, but I just didn't have the hour to watch it. It doesn't matter. I know this story well and I know well enough how to answer it.

The American Jewish Left hates Glenn Beck so much that they will defend anyone against him. Even the despicable George Soros.

Jewish leaders are expressing outrage that Fox News Channel provocateur Glenn Beck has revived an unfounded claim that billionaire businessman and philanthropist George Soros as a child in Nazi-collaborating Hungary helped ship Jews to death camps.

Beck is running a series this week on his radio and TV shows portraying Soros as attempting to control the U.S. economy, and on Wednesday he attacked Soros' childhood during World War II.

"And George Soros used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off," Beck said. "And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening.

"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. As a 14-year-old boy, I don't know what you would do."

...

"This is the height of ignorance or insensitivity, or both," said Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, who noted that as a child, he was protected by non-Jews who had not revealed his background to him.

"As a kid, at 6, I spit at Jews -- does that make me part of the Nazi machine?" Foxman said. "There's an arrogance here for Glenn Beck, a non-Jew, to set the standards of what makes a good Jew."

Elan Steinberg, the vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, called Beck's attack "improper."

"When you make a particularly monstrous accusation such as this, you have to have proof," he said. "I have seen no proof."

Yes, but there's a difference between hiding among righteous gentiles and hiding the fact that you're a Jew, on the one hand, and what Soros is accused of doing on the other (in the article cited, Ron Kampeas goes on to justify it by claiming that Soros only did it once).

But why rely on hearsay? Soros himself has spoken about the issue. This is from a transcript of a 60 Minutes interview between Steve Kroft and Soros. It was done in 1998.

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that's–that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not–not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't–you don't see the connection. But it was–it created no–no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: For example that, 'I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.' None of that?

Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c–I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was–well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets–that if I weren't there–of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would–would–would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the–whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the–I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.

There's a consensus in the Jewish community to try not to put ourselves in the position of judging someone in whose shoes you have never walked. Our rabbis tell us, "do not judge a man until you have reached his place." We don't know whether Soros took away property, for example, from someone who had already been taken to a death camp, never to return, or whether he removed property from someone's home right in front of them. But we also know that there were Jews who were kapos during the Holocaust, and despite the edict not to judge people, they are severely frowned upon in the Jewish community, both during the Holocaust and thereafter. Clearly, there is a difference between someone who survived the camps by removing gold jewelry from dead bodies and someone who survived by turning in others. Was Soros a kapo? I don't know. But when someone says he feels 'no guilt' because 'someone else would have done it anyway,' that's enough to raise my hackles pretty high.

The Holocaust generations (my parents' and grandparents' generations) resent anyone judging their actions during the Holocaust, and that's why you're hearing the type of reaction you heard from Abe Foxman (I don't know much about the other people Kampeas quotes). But based on that transcript, Foxman is wrong to describe the accusations against Soros as 'unsubstantiated.' Perhaps, Beck should have criticized Soros for his lack of remorse or guilt over what he did, rather than for the actions themselves, but that's already nuanced. It's the lack of remorse or guilt that indicate (to me anyway) that Soros is a vicious man with no feelings of empathy for his own people.

In any event, the attacks on Beck seem (to me anyway) to be motivated by the fact that Beck regularly attacks Liberal icons and not from any fear of him besmirching Holocaust survivors.

In my book, I don't even need to go to the Holocaust period to condemn Soros. This is enough for me.

In a 2003 speech, he accused Jews and Israel of causing anti-Semitism.

It's not often that George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, makes an appearance before a Jewish audience.

It's even rarer for him to use such an occasion to talk about Israel, Jews and his own role in effecting political change.

So when Soros stepped to the podium Wednesday to address those issues at a conference of the Jewish Funders Network, audience members were listening carefully.

Many were surprised by what they heard.

When asked about anti-Semitism in Europe, Soros, who is Jewish, said European anti-Semitism is the result of the policies of Israel and the United States.

"There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that," Soros said. "It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I'm critical of those policies."

"If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish," he said. "I can't see how one could confront it directly."

That is a point made by Israel's most vociferous critics, whom some Jewish activists charge with using anti-Zionism as a guise for anti-Semitism.

ASSOCIATES said Soros' appearance Wednesday was the first they could ever recall in which the billionaire, a Hungarian-born U.S. Jew who escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to London as a child, had spoken in front of a Jewish group or attended a Jewish function.

The one-day meeting on funding in Israel, which took place at the Harvard Club in New York, was limited mostly to representatives of Jewish philanthropic foundations.

After Soros' speech, Michael Steinhardt, the real-estate magnate and Jewish philanthropist who arranged for Soros to address the group, said in an interview that Soros' views do not reflect those of most Jewish millionaires or philanthropists.

He also pointed out that this was Soros' first speech to a Jewish audience.

Steinhardt approached the lectern and interrupted Soros immediately after his remarks on anti-Semitism.

"George Soros does not think Jews should be hated any more than they deserve to be," Steinhardt said by way of clarification, eliciting chuckles from the audience.

Steinhardt then gave the lectern back to Soros, who said he had something to add to his remarks on the issue of anti-Semitism. Soros then paused to ask if there were any journalists in the room.

When he learned that there were, Soros withheld further comment.

Note - the first time Soros ever spoke to a Jewish audience. The Holocaust ended nearly 60 years before that speech. For 60 years he felt obliged to try to hide the fact that he's a Jew?

It's sad to see the leaders of the American Jewish community rushing out to defend someone who repeats anti-Semitic tripe that claims Israel is responsible for anti-Semitism in his first speech ever to the Jewish community. Sad, but unfortunately not surprising.

Labels: anti-Semitism, George Soros, Glenn Beck, Holocaust, kapos

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:58 AM