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The man who cried anti-Semite

Abe Foxman, national director of the of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), recently accused Rush Limbaugh of reaching "a new low with his borderline anti-Semitic comments about Jews as bankers, their supposed influence on Wall Street, and how they vote." What did Limbaugh say? "People who have prejudice, people who have, you know -- what's the best way to say -- a little prejudice about them. To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting? He's assaulting bankers. He's assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there's -- if there's starting to be some buyer's remorse there."

Exactly which part of the statement is anti-Semitic? That Jews are mostly Democrats or that a disproportionate number work on Wall Street? Was Milton Himmelfarb "borderline anti-Semitic" when he observed that "Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans?" Foxman has a history of being quick to label statements as anti-Semitic. Last October, he pressured two county chairs of the South Carolina Republican Party into apologizing for writing "There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves."

During the 2004 Christmas season, Foxman accused Bill O'Reilly of promoting "ethnic cleansing" -- a Jewish caller believed public schools were using Christmas activities to convert children to Christianity and O'Reilly responded "Come on, if you are really offended, you've got to go to Israel then."

Nor does Foxman reserve his rebukes for Jewish issues. In a 2001 letter to the New York Times, Foxman compared college newspaper advertisements "denouncing reparations for slavery" to "advertisements that deny that the Holocaust happened."

And what about true anti-Semites? In 1991, Al Sharpton inflamed the mobs during the Crown Heights riots. Three years later, standing in front of the Jewish-owned Freddie's Fashion Mart, Sharpton decried "white interlopers". One of the protesters shot several people and torched the store. In 2007, Foxman partnered with Sharpton to support hate-crimes legislation in New York City. Anti-Semitism is a very serious accusation. Since Foxman can no longer distinguish between friends and foes, we, the Jewish people, must declare Foxman no longer speaks for us.

Joey Warren
Aberdeen