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Is it legitimate to blame the leftism of a public figure on his Jewishness?
Earlier today, as the latest in a recent series of posts dealing with the problem of Jewish leftism and anti-nationalism, I criticized New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer for telling businesses they could not require their employees to come to work today if the employees wanted to participate in the illegal aliens’ demonstrations. I described Spitzer’s revolutionary disposition in favor of illegal aliens as not just “leftist,” but “leftist-Jewish.” While it is of course legitimate to write critically about Jewish leftism (the Jewish columnist Dennis Prager has had a whole series on the subject lately), it seems to me that to single out the Jewishness of a leftist politician, when his Jewishness is not the issue and he himself has not brought up his Jewishness (and even though I carefully explained why I used the language I used), may be crossing the line into anti-Semitism. In my other recent writings on this charged subject, the Jewish leftists I was criticizing had themselves emphasized what they saw as the Jewish basis for their leftism. Since I didn’t feel 100 percent comfortable with the Spitzer item, I’ve removed it.
This was a useful experience for me, given that I’m constantly talking about the need to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Jews and anti-Semitism, Email entry |