Is calling out Jewish billionaires anti-Semitic?

This past August, an opinion piece appeared on the website of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) regarding a controversy surrounding Minnesota Republican politician Tom Emmer. The congressman had issued a fundraising letter in which he accused “far-left billionaires George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Michael Bloomberg” of having “essentially bought control of Congress for the Democrats.”

The fact that in a letter claiming that Congress had been bought by three wealthy people, two of the three are Jewish (and Steyer’s father is Jewish and he has at times identified as such) led some local Jewish leaders in Minnesota to level a charge of anti-Semitic dog-whistling at Emmer. In response, Rabbi Hershel Lutch wrote a JTA op-ed asserting that as “someone who knows Emmer well… nothing could be further from the truth…. Emmer has shown himself to be a true friend of the Jewish community and of the U.S.-Israel relationship…. While I personally may have preferred a different syntax within the fundraising letter, I find any suggestion that Emmer harbors attitudes of anti-Semitism to be profoundly offensive.”

Rabbi Lutch went on to say that “falsely accusing someone of anti-Semitism is just as dangerous as not calling out anti-Semitism when, in fact, it is present,” because “we lose our credibility to define and identify” actual anti-Semitism. If all conduct critical of any Jew is anti-Semitic, then the term “anti-Semite” loses its teeth and becomes just another meaningless expression.

Another JTA opinion writer, legal scholar David Schraub, took issue with Rabbi Lutch’s defense of Congressman Emmer, arguing that the case for Emmer’s letter “being anti-Semitic does not depend on asserting awful, corrupt motives or hatred of Jews… which I am sure [Emmer does]not hold, nor is it falsified by… having Jewish friends and allies, which I am sure [he does] possess…. [I]t rests not on a ridiculous assertion that all ‘criticism’ of a Jew is anti-Semitic, but rather on… use of the trope of a plutocratic Jewish conspiracy that has the American political establishment ‘bought and paid for,’ stealing our national sovereignty from patriotic ‘Main Street’ Americans and placing it in the hands of wealthy globalist financiers.” Schraub also noted that Emmer had no second thoughts about the letter and that the National Republican Congressional Committee insisted that “there is nothing anti-Semitic about drawing attention to billionaire donors and who they are giving money to.”

Fair enough. An issue like that raised by the possible innuendo of Emmer’s letter is ambiguous enough that a reasonable case can be made for either position.

Sometimes, however, the matter is much more straightforward, as in another controversy involving a Minnesota politician (is it something in the water up there?), recounted in Commentary by political science professor Jonathan Marks:

A certain Minnesota politician, not so long ago, made baseless, textbook anti-Semitic charges of dual loyalty against pro-Israel politicians and groups. That politician’s party barely responded.

I refer not to Ilhan Omar but to Jason Lewis, a former Republican member of Congress now running to represent Minnesota in the Senate. During a 2013 radio show, Lewis, the host, was responding to a worried caller, who observed, falsely, that there are a number of dual citizens of Israel and the United States in Congress. Lewis agreed. “There are a number of dual citizens,” he said. Then, moving beyond Congress, he said, “John Bolton is a dual citizen… of Israel and America.” No, Bolton… is not a dual citizen of Israel and America….

If you believe that the left traffics in anti-Semitism when it grossly exaggerates the influence of Israel on American politics, then you can’t deny that Lewis was trafficking in anti-Semitism when he falsely asserted that, during the Bush administration, “there were a number of dual citizens, citizens of Israel, citizens of America who were making policy.”

If you believe that “Israel lobby” often means “Jewish lobby,” and that attacks on the Israel lobby are often veiled attacks on Jews, then you can’t deny that Lewis, who used “Israel lobby” and “Jewish lobby” interchangeably, was trafficking in anti-Semitism when he said that pro-Israel lobbyists “control the Republican Party”….

Lewis hasn’t denied that he said exactly what CNN claims he said. Instead, he decries attacks on “his 25-year career as a political commentator — which naturally meant asking rhetorical questions, challenging audiences, playing devil’s advocate, and seeing both sides of every issue.” But he wasn’t playing devil’s advocate. He made every one of the claims in question in his own name….

We rightly blamed Democrats for failing unequivocally and clearly to denounce Ilhan Omar’s remarks about dual loyalty. But the Republican response to Lewis, who hasn’t even pretended to apologize for his remarks… has been still more tepid.

Professor Marks could not have known that his last sentence would turn out to be a great understatement. On October 10, just one week after Marks’s piece appeared in Commentary, the president of the United States, at a campaign rally in Minnesota, announced his endorsement of Jason Lewis in his Senate race, in the same speech in which he denounced none other than Ilhan Omar. The Republican response to this hasn’t been tepid, but trepid (an antonym for intrepid).

More accurately, the response has been nonexistent.

But that’s how it goes these days. Last spring, an anti-Semitic cartoon that appeared in the international edition of the New York Times triggered a huge outcry, rightly so, with countless outraged op-eds appearing in certain publications for days on end. But just weeks later, Ben Garrison, a cartoonist who has drawn and disseminated numerous cartoons dripping with extreme anti-Semitic and anti-Israel messages, was invited to a White House “social media summit,” and was only disinvited after several days of stonewalling, with no explanation or apology. There was not a word of critique from Congressional Republicans, nor was it covered by the same publications that expended tens of thousands of words on the Times story.

When Congressional Democrats cowardly failed to pass a resolution specifically censuring Ilhan Omar’s remarks, the story filled the op-ed and letters sections of our publications. But the mirror-image Jason Lewis story — like the Ben Garrison story before it — one learns of for the first time only in this space.

Obviously, there are responsibilities and sensitivities that media reporting and commentary must consider. A balance between truth-telling and prudence must be struck, and not everything that happens should be reported and commented on. But when a particular story involving one side of the political aisle has been deemed print worthy, doesn’t elemental fairness demand that readers be told when the same things occur across that aisle?

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 783. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com