[images added by this website] www.israelnn.com   October 19, 2004 / 4 Cheshvan 5765 Anti-Semitism in the 1944 Election, and Today by Dr. Rafael Medoff JEWISH government officials secretly manipulating the president? That accusation, heard recently in connection with the decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein, was also raised sixty years ago, in the heat of the 1944 presidential race. The lightning rod for criticism in 1944 was Sidney Hillman, a prominent labor leader and aide to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A rumor at that summer's Democratic convention claimed that in considering the choice of Senator Harry Truman as his running mate, FDR had told his advisers to "clear it with Sidney." Some opponents of the administration seized upon that phrase to make it appear that Hillman, a Lithuanian-born Jewish socialist, had secret veto power over all of Roosevelt's policies. A full-page ad in the Stamford (Connecticut) Advocate called him "the power behind the throne" and pleaded with voters to "Stop Hillmanism." An editorial in the New York Daily News referred to what it claimed was Hillman's "rabbinical education." Some Republicans in Pittsburgh reportedly put up posters headlined, "This is your country. Why let Sidney Hillman run it?" Democratic National Committee chairman Robert Hannegan protested what he called a pattern of Republican campaign speakers singling out Hillman and emphasizing that he was "foreign born." Hannegan called the tactic "a clear injection of racial prejudice" into the election campaign. In our own times, a similar tactic was employed by Pat Buchanan in an article opposing the Gulf War of 1991. He named four prominent supporters of war with Jewish-sounding names as being part of "the Israeli Defense Ministry's amen corner in the United States," and accused them of planning to send "kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown" to do the fighting. The tactic was revived this year, coincidentally just in time for the 2004 presidential election season. Some opponents of the current administration began singling out Jewish government officials and accusing them of tricking America into war against Saddam Hussein in order to help Israel. Although these critics typically labeled their targets "neocons" rather than Jews, their message seemed clear enough. As New York Times columnist David Brooks commented, "con is short for 'conservative' and neo is short for 'Jewish'." Surprisingly, such a statement was recently made by former US Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart, who described these villainous advisers to George Bush as "ideologues", unable to distinguish between their loyalty "to their original homelands" (guess which one) and loyalty "to America and its national interests." Another unexpected source of such rhetoric is historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who wrote last month that Bush "honestly believed the tall tales" about Saddam because he was fed "phony intelligence" about Iraq by the Mossad -- the Israeli intelligence agency -- which has long been a favorite pin-cushion of conspiracy theorists. In Schlesinger's view, Israel is "sure that the US, for internal political reasons" -- a common code word for 'American Jews' -- would never withdraw support from the Jewish State. The Israelis have made Bush their "virtual prisoner" in order to bring about US policies that are "pertinent to the imperial dreams, and delusions, of the Straussians [and their] neocon vision...," Schlesinger wrote. 'Straussian' has become another codeword, following press reports depicting Jewish conservatives in the administration as secret disciples of the late University of Chicago philosophy professor Leo Strauss. Not everyone settles for using codewords. The Vancouver-based radical journal Adbusters earlier this year ran an editorial titled "Why Won't Anyone Say They're Jewish?" Alongside the editorial was a list of fifty "influential neocons," with a black dot in the margin next to those whom the editors believe are Jewish. There is good reason to be concerned about these kinds of statements, which are painfully reminiscent of the kinds of anti-Semitic allegations traditionally used to rouse violent anti-Semitism. The notion of Jews secretly controlling governments is the theme of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery from Czarist Russia that featured prominently in Nazi propaganda (and is a mainstay of Arab and Muslim incitement against Jews today). Prof. Norman Cohn's study of the Protocols, appropriately titled "Warrant for Genocide", concludes that it "helped to prepare the way for the Holocaust." It seems as if the Protocols circulates anew in each generation; it was recently for sale even on the web site of Wal-Mart until protests compelled its withdrawal from the site a few weeks ago. Not everyone who criticized Sidney Hillman in 1944 was anti-Semitic, nor is everyone who criticizes President Bush's Jewish advisers today. But there is good reason to suspect anti-Semitism when someone focuses an adviser named Hillman (then) or Wolfowitz (now) and ignores equally influential advisers whose names do not sound Jewish. We still do not seem to have learned the lesson that the major political parties must condemn such incendiary statements and clearly disown the authors. Failure to call anti-Semitism by its name lowers the standards of acceptable discourse and wrongly treats the culprits as legitimate participants in the mainstream political culture, a status they surely do not deserve.     Aug 30, 2004: Jew held over Paris fire: Crude slogans at the scene suggested an anti-Semitic motive Outrage among New York Jews that FBI is not hiring them Aug 18, 2004: Jury convicts California professor in staged hate-crime case Suspicions voiced that New Zealand Jews smashed up their own cemetery | David Irving ups reward offer to $5,000 Jul 13, 2004: 'Anti-Jewish train attack' on Mother, baby in Paris now in doubt

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