Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper whose English Internet edition is widely read in the U.S.,
has an editorial today that states: “While Obama was taking advantage of Martin Luther King Day to speak out against anti-Semitism among blacks, Jewish spokesmen were using racist language against him, solely because his father was Muslim.”
I looked in vain in the rest of the editorial for any evidence that anyone who can reasonably be described as a “Jewish spokesman” had said anything remotely racist about Obama. As far as I can tell, Ha’aretz’s main complaint is that Jews with right-wing views on Israel are suspicious of Obama because they see him as a “leftist”. Ha’aretz’s editorialists seem to agree that he’s a leftist (in Israeli terms, this means something more like “liberal” in American vernacular), but thinks that’s cause for celebration, not criticism. I don’t get the concept that when a right-winger is hostile to someone both they and his defenders consider a “leftist”, this is an issue of racism; do right-wingers tend to support white Protestant leftists?
It’s true, as Ha’aretz points out, that there has been a virulent, dishonest email campaign against Obama, based on his being some sort of Muslim Manchurian candidate. I’ve received one such email from a casual acquaintance (see below). The one I received struck me as targeted to religious Christians, though the emails have been sent to Jews as well. But be that as it may, this email campaign has not, to my knowledge, been traced to any prominent individual Jewish activist or Jewish organization, and indeed was formally condemned by a group of “Jewish spokesmen,” representing a broad spectrum of religious, fraternal, civil rights, and anti-defamation organizations.
Unless Ha’aretz can come up with a reasonable example of “Jewish spokesmen” using “racist language” regarding Obama, I hope the newspaper will withdraw this accusation and run a correction. But I suspect that Ha’aretz is less concerned with Obama per se, and more with trying to discredit the America “right-wing Jews” (a very broad category for Ha’aretz; consider, as an analogy, who the editors of The Nation would consider right-wing) it holds in contempt.
UPDATE: For those unfamiliar with Ha’aretz’s editor’s politics, note that recently Ha’aretz editor David Landau reportedly “implored [Condoleeza] Rice to intervene, asserting that the Israeli government wanted ‘to be raped’ and that it would be like a ‘wet dream’ for him to see this happen.” In other words, Ha’aretz would like policies supported by the Israeli left but opposed by most Israelis to be imposed on Israel by the U.S.
ADDENDUM: Here’s the email a casual acquaintance sent me:
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