By Pamela Geller, AMERICAN THINKER
We saw the lengths to which the left will go to demonize and destroy its opponents this week, when in the New York Jewish Week on March 16, Abraham Foxman charged that I am “in many ways no better than Farrakhan or Buchanan.” I am proud of my work as a patriot and a passionate Zionist; to be compared to Jew-haters by a man who styles himself a leader of the Jews is abominable.
Foxman charged me with bigotry for my work with Stop Islamization of America, a program of my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative. So now defending free society from an ideology that makes war against free speech and equal rights for women and non-Muslims is “bigotry.” Defending Jews from an ideology that features a more deeply ingrained and violent anti-Semitism than any other in the world is “hatred.”
We have seen the likes of Abe Foxman before in Jewish history: the reviled traitor among us — Dathan in The Ten Commandments. The idea that this greasy quisling still leads the Anti-Defamation League is a stunning indictment of the failure of Jewish lay leadership. Worse still, a Jewish press is publishing this collaborator. I called Gary Rosenblatt, the editor of Jewish Week, several times over the last few days, but he was always (surprise!) on the other line when I called. He did finally agree to print a letter from me, but he refused to give me the space he eagerly gave to Foxman to defame me.
The capacity for humiliating, destructive behavior from Abe Foxman (and those Jews who fund the Anti-Defamation League) continues to astound and repel proud Jews across the world.
Foxman’s record of poisonous activity that is ultimately harmful to the Jewish community is longstanding. His denial of the Armenian genocide is monstrous. If we as a people cannot stand with other victims of genocide, then who can? Here is a man who refuses to call the Armenian genocide of two million Christians a genocide, but who expects the Holocaust to be considered as such. What’s the difference? And if he can dismiss that genocide, what differentiates him from, say, an Ahmadinejad, who denies the Holocaust? Foxman went so far as to fire an ADL regional director for disagreeing with him over the Armenian genocide.
Foxman has defended Barack Obama’s egregious betrayal of Israel, saying, in the teeth of all the evidence, “I don’t see this as the president throwing Israel under the bus.” He has (only once) acknowledged that “the greatest threat to the Jewish people and the highest priority for the ADL was that which came from Islamic extremists.” However, he has issued thousands of press releases over the last seventeen years, and less than three percent of them have had anything to do with the Islamic jihad or Islamic anti-Semitism.
Once, in 2010, Foxman showed that he still had some remnants of a conscience and the courage to do the right thing when he voiced opposition to the Ground Zero mosque. But immediately after that, he began prostrating himself in front of any mosque or madman who would listen, trying to make amends. He even launched the “Interfaith Coalition on Mosques” in September 2010; its objective is to fight for monster-mosque construction rights. What’s wrong with this? Imagine an “Islamic Coalition to Build Synagogues in Muslim Countries,” or the “Islamic Coalition of Muslims to Build Coptic Christian Churches in Egypt,” or the “Islamic Coalition to Build Hindu Temples in India, Kashmir, and Pakistan.” (OK, you can stop laughing now.)
Foxman is building coalitions to construct mega-mosques that will almost certainly teach the most vile anti-Semitism on the planet today, as do 80% of mosques in America. Foxman also came out in support of the Islamic school in Brooklyn whose principal was forced to resign because of her involvement in anti-Semitic “Intifada NYC” t-shirts (see here).
Foxman demonizes proud Jews who love Israel and fight for freedom, while he kowtows to the Islamic jihad. And Jewish Week happily serves it up to its subscribers.
Our Jewish leadership has failed us miserably. Foxman must go.
Posters should keep in mind that the ADL staff is probably reading every word of these blogs, and collecting the screen names of every person commenting, especially those hostile to Foxman or the ADL.
Most likely, they are building a file on “dangerous extremist posters” to “far right extremist hate sites” like this one.
It’s amazing how much the ADL has declined as a visible, effective agency. I wonder how they get their funding. I notice a lot of regional offices listed on their website, but I could never find the name of a regional director for my local area. Thirty or forty years ago, the regional director’s name was well known in the Jewish community and often identified in the local media with respect to one issue or another.
Their programming has become strange–tolerance concerts and lunches for young lawyers where they invite a judge who, when in private practice, represented SaudiAramco in winning a huge case before the Supreme Court which effectively gave a green light to that company to discriminate against Americans in employment. This of course, would disproportionately harm Jews. Why they would invite a champion of the Arab boycott to be the guest speaker at one of their events is beyond me.
Abraham Foxman is a progressive pig who pushes the progressive agenda even when it stands against the Jewish way. His $400,000 salary is obscene. Foxman had the chutzpah to call pro Israel conservatives anti Semitic in 1994 but ignored the Jew hating Democrats. He defends the Jew hating Muslim Obama while attacking Glenn Beck who supports the Jewish people and Israel. Foxman is useless to the Jewish people and I wonder how much of his excessive salary comes from the Nazi George Soros.
@ Ken Besig, Israel:
But by coming out in defense of sharia law, he is not even being a loyal American.
Abe Foxman does have his positive points, unfortunately he also has some huge negatives, some due to ignorance and some because of his desire to be an American of Jewish background.
Foxman is old school in his citizenship, often trying to be more American than Jewish in the hope that he will not be seen as having dual loyalties.
It’s too bad for him that in trying to be both he fails at each.
Indeed it is.
@ James B from Canada:
I’m not sure $400,000 is all that much these days. I’ve seen some of the salaries at Federations and other Jewish organzations and $400K seems to be right in line. Now, whether in a time of belt-tightening and declining Jewish philanthropy executives should be getting that much, I don’t know. I think Foxman probably gets a lot of perks besides. I used to hear stories from ADL staff back in the Epstein-Forster days about how these guys were feathering their nests with all kinds of perks: limousines instead of taxis, expensive rental cars, expensive condominiums in Israel and south Florida, the most expensive hotel suites, on and on and on. They probably have very generous retirement programs, while many of the lower staff in the field offices, etc., are paid very modestly.
I remember when Arnold Forster made a series of radio tapes on Israel. Well, this was supposed to be something that could be used by radio stations all over, especially in the heartland, but they were embarrassing. With his thick, off-putting New York accent, his homely appearance with that hair slicked down behind his head down to his neck, I don’t see how they made a good impression. Yet I’m sure Forster was very proud and full of himself, thinking of himself as some kind middle-aged Jewish rock star. Still, they would have been better off finding someone who middle America could relate too. Perhaps some popular American actor or other figure who was very pro-Israel. I don’t know who that would have been, but I wonder if the Forster tapes were a complete waste.
Of course, the ADL also put out its “exposes” on the danger of the American Right, which included everything from the far out kooky neo-Nazi types to mainstream conservatives.
Like the Jewish community of the time, the ADL had an orientation toward the Democratic Party and liberalism of the 50’s and ’60’s. I still think they’re stuck in it and don’t know how to relate to the modern American conservative mainstream where many of the most pro-Jewish and pro-Israel Americans are to be found, and where more and more Jews are increasingly gravitating.
I don’t know if any of the other Jewish “defense” organizations–as they used to be called–are any better. I just don’t see much evidence of life and activity at the local level anymore. Of course, they might be symptomatic of the American Jewish community at large these days, with the exception of the Orthodox.
Let’s face it–we’re disappearing, slowly, but surely.
First of all, in defense of Foxman, no one should comment about his parents. Foxman, who was born in Russia, was left with Catholics when his parents were forced into a ghetto. He was raised as a Catholic for the first four or five years of his life, until his Jewish birth parents were able to regain custody after the war.
I do disagree very much with Foxman, however, and believe a once-proud organization is sinking into ineffectiveness and irrelevance. While he was selected by the ADL Board to succeed Nathan Perlmutter as the National Director, I suspect the succession was all arranged by the late Benjamin Epstein upon his retirement. It is foolish to believe that these leaders: the late Benjamin Epstein, Arnold Forster, Nathan Perlmitter and Abe Foxman are popularly elected. Instead, they are largely self-appointed, after winning the approval of the most senior staff who have all the power. The National Board of the ADL does not run the organization–it is run by the staff, and always has been. Sure, they vote on some policy issues, they make all the contributions, but they are not the power–that is in the hands of the National Director. Somehow, years ago, they managed to maneuver Foxman into the line of succession ahead of Forster’s very able no. 2 in the ADL’s Civil Rights Division.
There is no mass constituency for the ADL in the national Jewish community. They don’t even have the base in B’nai B’rith anymore. It is not a mass membership organization, and Foxman and other national organization spokesmen like Harris at American Jewish Committee are not our leaders. They are just self-appointed spokesmen, or at most, were elected by their organizations who represent a tiny sliver of American Jewry.
Don’t be fooled into believing their “leader” status.
Once, the ADL was highly visible and highly effective–it had very good investigative operations and exposed and challenged the anti-semites and other haters. Now, you almost never hear about them. So, once in a while they might still buy a full page ad in the New York Times, but analysis done many years ago by a leading Jewish community expert on public opinion determined that it was mainly a tranquilizer for the Jewish community, with minimal impact beyond that on public opinion. A real waste of money if you ask me.
Despite being over the top at times, I think Pamela Geller is worth a hundred ADL’s in exposing and publicizing the haters, extremists and anti-semites in our world. It’s the same with a number of other very effective individual bloggers and writers who have taken over the primary role of protecting Jews and Israel.
You should see the marble-staired ADL office in the exclusive Rehavis section of Jerusalem. Abe Foxman is living high off the hog. I remember before the Disengagement (Expulsion) from Gaza and Homesh, when Abe Foxman seated among the political establishment elite noted nonchalantly the incongruity of “ëvacuating the Jews” from Gaza but then that said he supported the Disengagement. He then shed all doubt where his allegiance lied.
Do you vote for a candidate that knows you are gullible? These Republicans who patronize us, who call us nine kinds of wonderful ally, are all liars who take advantage of our generosities. We have become so flattered that we can’t see these candidates would knife us in the back at a second’s notice. Obama should make every one of us realize that talk is very, very cheap. You are fooling yourself it you think Barack Obama will ever do anything for you out of the kindness of his heart. Never happen, friends, never. We are such idiots at times, why can’t we learn? The sheer diversity of our culture means there are huge diversions in opinions that we share. We are a people that knows better but too often we get sloppy and sentimental realizing, in the end, that we trusted where we should not have. I am telling you that Obama is not to be trusted, ever. I am not into trusting American politicians and while buying perceived loyalty sounds good, it rarely is.
@ James B from Canada:
There is nothing wrong with earning 400K–its how he earns it which is despicable!
Abe Foxman–is a self hating, God hating Marxist whore–he is UnAmerican and he is not a genuine friend of Israel; his organization promotes all manner of sexual perversion and hatred of Godly morality–no one who does this, no one who is a Marxist can be a genuine friend of Israel!
Abe Foxman’s parents failed him miserably–and so have most Jews parents!
Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Foxman earned over $ 400,000 in 2010. Is that not disgusting? As disgusting as the jews who vote democrat
Sad that Sarah Palin is not running. I am happy to say that the middle name of my youngest daughter is named Sarah ( not in her honour).