The Sunday before last as the Gaza crisis raged billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch wondered aloud (in something called silly enough a “tweet”) “Why is the Jewish-owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?” The backlash was as Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin wrote “instant and ferocious.” By Monday Murdoch had issued an apology to the Anti-Defamation League in which he wrote that “I feel very strongly about the righteousness of Israel’s cause. I do get very upset when I see coverage that I feel is unfair…. But I should have stuck to the substance of the issue and not bring in irrelevant and incorrect ethnic matters.” 

Too bad. Murdoch allowed himself to be conned by the folks who run the apology racket known as the ADL — think of it as the Jewish analogue to racial racketeers Jackson and Sharpton just without the extortion of millions from large corporations with threats of violence — and its media abettors. Every now and then some public figure will say something the Jewish establishment bigwigs deem offensive to Jews and the drumbeat of “He must apologize” begins continuing until the victim du jour publicly humbles himself and kisses the pinky ring of some “Jewish leader.” If the offense was severe enough he’s advised to enter a six-month program teaching “sensitization” or “tolerance.”  

It makes no difference to these self-appointed enforcers of PC (and lovers of PR) that Mr. Murdoch is a staunch long-standing defender of Jews that his 100% true remark was itself in defense of Jews and no one else will say it if he doesn’t. The New York Sun led off an editorial in support of Murdoch with a great anecdote about Robert Bartley the late long-time editor of the Wall Street Journal who was once asked “how he managed to defend Israel with even more verve than some of the Jewish newspapers. ‘Oh I had it easy ’ Bartley was quoted as replying ‘I’m not Jewish.’$$$Seperatequote$$$”

But all that matters to these monitors of proper speech is that Murdoch used one of the bad words in this case “Jewish-owned.” It’s right there in the lexicon of the forbidden alongside “Holocaust” and “Nazi.” These all can only be uttered by certain types of Jews or by non-Jews only when and for the purposes that the “Jewish leaders” say they can. 

Never mind that as Mr. Tobin observed Murdoch with his vast media holdings is himself “living proof that non-Jews actually control a lot more of the media than any Jew.” Tobin went on to argue however that although the charge of anti-Semitism was “absurd” and “the worst kind of slur ” his remark was nevertheless “unfortunate since that phrase smacks of anti-Semitic myths about the media being controlled by a Jewish cabal.” 

I disagree. All Murdoch did was voice two self-evident propositions: First not that Jews have an evil media monopoly but that there are influential Jewish-owned media outlets and second that some of the most prominent of these are consistently biased against Israel up to and including this most recent crisis. Exhibit A was the New York Times’ front-page juxtaposition of two three-column-wide photos one of Muslims mourning Hamas arch-terrorist al-Jabari the other of Jews mourning Mrs. Mira Scharf a”h. The message wrote Dennis Prager at National Review was one of “moral equivalence: Look sophisticated Times readers! Virtually identical scenes of death and mourning on both sides of the conflict. How tragic.” 

But let’s focus on the Jewish accusers themselves. The hatred they stir up is real and it has many sources: One is the Jewish apology racket which I imagine many non-Jews don’t take very kindly to especially when as often happens these pushy Jews demand apologies from others’ religious leaders for honestly describing their own theology.  

Another is the fact that secular Jewish groups and individuals are in the forefront of promoting the moral decline of America through their stands on various societal issues and their prominence in the degenerate entertainment and yes media worlds. What do you think religious or just decent Americans say when they see yet another Jewish name pushing this agenda? Finally when Jews stray from the Torah that too can trigger the animosity of those who surround us in what is really a supreme kindness to bring us back to Him.

And after all this we are to sit quietly by as a group like ADL from its high moral perch issues a press release advising that it — not mind you the Jewish community — has “accepted” Rupert Murdoch’s apology? People who wouldn’t know which way to hold a Gemara who are the cause of so much animus themselves will now decide whom to forgive for contrived sins against the Jews. 

They think they own these terms which is why they are selective in whom they choose to censure. Don’t dare think of referring for example to the descent of millions of American Jews into the spiritual abyss or of tens of thousands of never-to-be-born unborn babies in Eretz Yisrael as a “silent holocaust.” That is unpardonable.

But last week the son of an entertainment-industry newspaper publisher apologized for his father’s involvement in the blacklisting of actors in the 1950s as suspected Communists in what he called the “Hollywood Holocaust.” Not a peep from the apology police.

And when in 2002 the Jewish Museum —  an affiliate of the Conservative movement — hosted an exhibit featuring a concentration camp made of Lego; a trick photograph of someone holding up a Diet Coke surrounded by emaciated Jews in the Buchenwald lager; flattering busts of Mengele and similar moral outrages the best the head of the ADL could do to protest was to say “I’m not saying forever and ever I’m saying not now … in another generation when survivors will not be hurt.…We can postpone it. I’m not saying it should never be done.” 

Mr. Murdoch ought to know that such Jews don’t own the term “Jewish-owned” or “Holocaust” for that matter.

ETERNAL WAIT Who knew going to the post office could be so uplifting? I don’t mean that feeling of relief when scanning its walls and failing to find one’s picture adorning them — although that’s nothing to sneeze at either. 

The other day I was standing in line waiting for one of two postal clerks on duty to finish with their customers. The wait dragged on which gave me in turn lots of time to muse about how we were getting to see first-hand why as reported in the news just last week the US Postal Service is $15.9 billion in the red.  

Then my eyes fixed on a poster on the wall behind the clerks. Beneath a sampling of various holiday-themed stamps for sale the text read: “Celebrate the Holidays Forever.” Let’s put aside whether purchasing licking and affixing stamps to envelopes can in any reasonable sense be a celebration of a holiday “Hanukkah” — as one stamp on the sign read — or any other. 

But “Forever” was the word that piqued my attention. Whatever celebratory aspect there is to using holiday-themed stamps is rather short-lived lasting at most from the moment you buy them until the moment Aunt Hannah deposits the envelope of the holiday card you sent her into the wastebasket. That’s not nearly an eternity except in the same sense that I might have used that word to describe my wait in line. 

But this much I do know: they consciously used the word “forever” in their own trivial way because they or the industrial psychologists they consult know the power it wields on the human mind and heart; they know that people are deeply affected by the notion of that which lasts forever and ever that people value such things more than anything else.   

And then it occurred to me: Whichever creative geniuses dreamt up this sign have co-opted the notion of eternity to sell stamps just as others have to purvey diamonds and so much else in today’s society when in fact there really is eternity to be had — but it’s G-d and Torah that has it on offer. V’chayei olam notah b’socheinu: “Forever” is not just a word to manipulate customers it’s a veritable tree rooted in our midst even giving off delectable fruits to be enjoyed in This World things like kibud av va’eim gemilus chasadim and above all talmud Torah. 

The mere thought is enough to make an interminable wait at the post office a downright pleasure.