400 rabbis urge Fox to sanction Glenn Beck
400 rabbis spent at least $100,000 for ads in the Wall Street Journal and the Forward on Thursday urging Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch to sanction Glenn Beck for 'attacks' on George Soros and to demand that news director Roger Ailes apologize "for his dismissive remarks about rabbis' sensitivity to how the Holocaust is used on the air." The letter states, “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.”Apparently, these rabbis didn't bother to read what Soros himself said about his wartime experiences. If they had, they would have discovered that Soros is a lot less genteel about his experiences than the rabbis are. Soros dishes it out as well as he takes it - which is much better than the rabbis.
Mr. Beck’s three-day series defaming Holocaust survivor George Soros sparked the letter from rabbis. At that time, Mr. Beck claimed Mr. Soros survived the Holocaust as 14-year-old boy by collaborating with the Nazis to send other Jews to the death camps. Mr. Beck said, that Mr. Soros “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here’s a Jewish boy helping send Jews to the death camps.”
Mr. Beck’s three-day attack on Mr. Soros was hardly the first time he has misused the Holocaust to incite viewers. The rabbis’ note Mr. Beck has made “literally hundreds of on-air references to the Holocaust and Nazis when characterizing people with whom [Beck] disagree[s].” Beck routinely compares American leaders to Nazis, has likened his crusade against progressives to that of “Israeli Nazi Hunters,” and has said that putting the “common good” first leads to “death camps.”
In the face of mounting criticism by Jewish groups, Fox News chief Roger Ailes dismissed criticism of Mr. Beck in an interview with the Daily Beast as nothing more than “left-wing rabbis who basically don’t think that anybody can ever use the word ‘Holocaust’ on the air.”
As to Ailes, I don't have the entire list of who signed the letter, but a look at what they say about it shows he's not far off.
The letter signed by rabbis from across the United States -- including the heads of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements as well as prominent Orthodox rabbis – accuses Mr. Beck and Fox News Network head Roger Ailes of diminishing the memory and meaning of the Holocaust.Notice - NO Orthodox leaders. So who are the 'prominent Orthodox rabbis'? Hint: Their names aren't Feinstein or Kotler or Solomon or Schachter or Tendler. (I'm not even naming Israeli rabbis). But their names might be Schneier. So why is Ailes wrong?
...
Lead supporters (organizational affiliation listed for purposes of identification only):
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, Vice President, American Jewish University, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies
Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
Rabbi Daniel Nevins, Dean, Jewish Theological Seminary Rabbinical School
Rabbi Yael Ridberg, President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association
Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus, President, Central Conference of American Rabbis
Rabbi Steven Wernick, Executive Vice President, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President, Union for Reform Judaism
Labels: Fox News, George Soros, Glenn Beck, Rabbis' letter, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:53 PM
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