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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.![](../../std/dings/square.gif) ![](../../std/dings/related_250.gif)
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 ![](../../std/dings/extlink.gif)
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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