WHATEVER ELSE HE MAY BE, HE'S THE ENEMY:

Open Season on 'Open Society': Why an anti-communist Holocaust survivor is being demonized as a Socialist, Self-hating Jew (Matt Welch, 12/08/03, Reason)

It is on the faultlines of anti-Semitism that the Jewish Holocaust survivor has received some of the most withering criticism, most stemming from this reported response at an early November Jewish forum in New York to a question about rising anti-Semitism in Europe: "There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that... 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... I'm also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world... As an unintended consequence of my actions...I also contribute to that image."

This was enough to provoke unfunny comedian Jackie Mason and writing partner Raoul Felder into not only identifying Soros as a "self-hating Jew," but calling him a "donkey," criticizing his mother's conversion from the faith, and even taking a swipe at the pre-pubescent George's efforts at "passing as a non-Jew...to survive World War II."

Jerusalem Post columnists had a field day: Uriel Heilman said that the comments "defended anti-Semitism," Uri Dan charged that Soros "hasn't learned the lessons of the Holocaust," and Amotz Asa-El called him the "epitome" of the "overlap between anti-Semitic myth and Jewish reality," and a man "who spent a lifetime laboring to transform Henry Ford's International Jew from myth to reality."

Is George Soros a self-hating anti-Semite? I don't have the omniscience or temperament to make that judgment about someone who survived the Holocaust and directly confronted anti-Semitism on a constant basis in post-communist Central Europe. I can say, after more than a decade of observing his actions and words, that, regarding his comments on his own role in anti-Semitism, overly critical self-examination is at the root of his intellectual approach, along with (contradictory as it sounds) a massive ego and belief in his superior hunches.

This is the background against which the controversy over the following remarks is set:

From the June 3 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: George Soros, who is described by some as "Daddy Warbucks" of the Democratic Party, was introduced by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at an event in Washington, and he compared the prison abuse pictures in Iraq to the attacks of 9/11.

[...]

BLANKLEY: Look, if he wasn't a multi-billionaire, he'd just be another ignored left-wing crank, but we all tend to pay more attention to people who have several billion dollars.

[...]

BLANKLEY: This is a man who has blamed the Jews for anti-Semitism. ... This is a man who, when he was plundering the world's currencies, in England in '92, he caused the Southeast Asian financial crisis in '97 --

[...]

BLANKLEY: He said that he has no moral responsibility for the consequences of his financial actions. He is a self-admitted atheist, he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust.

[...]

BLANKLEY: When a man is worth this kind of money, and he's spending it on trying to influence the American public in an election, trying to buy the election, he's not going to, we have a right to know what kind of an unscrupulous man he is.

[...]

BLANKLEY: He's buying influence all over the world. He's a robber baron, he's a pirate capitalist, and he's a reckless man.

[...]

BLANKLEY: He supported abortion in Eastern Europe, in a country that's losing population, he's a self-admitted atheist, I think he's a very bad influence in the world. He's entitled to spend his money, and the public is entitled to know what kind of a man he is.

[...]

HANNITY: Tony, I think you're right. He is trying to buy the election, we have a right to know who he is, and the Democrats who support him are only doing it for money.

The remark about "a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust" does seem to cast an unfair aspersion -- unless Mr. Blankley is familiar with the details of something that is not widely known -- but the rest is well within the bounds of social discourse. In particular, not only is the self-hating Jew charge supported by the facts but it appears likely that Mr. Soros's particular hatred of George W. Bush is a function of the latter's Christianity and Zionism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 6, 2004 12:35 PM