Of course! American Jews should focus on the threat posed by their evangelical-Protestant fellow citizens, who are among the strongest supporters of Israel and Jewish religious expression and self-determination, because the evangelicals might, one day, try to persuade the Jews to convert to Christianity. I guess that means there’s less need to be concerned about the people who want to kill Jews right now.
I suppose the ADL could have said something reckless and inflammatory, like the truth: Jews have never had it as good as they do in the modern USA. Pointing that out probably wouldn’t help the fundraising, however.
Like Jews did so well among pagans in the twentieth century; nor were things so swimmingly great in the countries that forbade any religion at all.
Sometimes I wonder if alienation (indeed, in some, demonization) of evangelicals not just by Jews but by some cultural elites is a matter of class.
It’s partly class, I’m sure, but it seems to be most strongly correlated with religious affiliation, which among American Jews is strongly correlated with political affiliation. Generally, the more religious Jews are, the more conservative they are politically. The so-called reformed Jews are both the least religious and the most leftist. My impression is that for many of them leftist politics (what they might think of as belief in “social justice”) substitutes for Judaism, and they confuse the two. These are the Jews who tend to fret about the “Christian Right.” Paradoxically, the most religious Jews tend also to be more tolerant of religious people of other faiths.
Mostly this is a fund raising appeal from Foxman to an established and older audience. Most of them grew up in big cities in the east and the only non-Jews they knew were catholic immigrants. The Democrat party bosses, many of whom were Irish catholics who hated the British, used the middle American WASP as their whipping boy.
Philip Roth exemplified their mentality in “the Plot Against America.” They are old and set in their ways.
This misguided attack on Judaism’s most loyal supporters is the result of total ignorance of who the “Christian Right” really is. There are very few fundamentalists (of the Christian sort) on the upper west side of Manhattan, and for most of its residents the thought of crossing the Hudson River makes them break out in hives. So they have lived their lives in perfect isolation; learning about the “Fundies” at Ethical Culture meetings and in the New York Times. They wouldn’t dream of going anywhere near a Babtist, but think nothing of vacationing in France or Holland, places where Jews are in real danger.
Jonathan, you underestimate the threat! All those Christians nutjobs over at the Willow Creek Mega-Church are going to come piling out of there some sunny Sunday morning, load up their SUVs and Minivans, drive out in two columns to Glencoe and Deerfield, and have their kids throw molotov cocktails through the windows of all the houses where there might be some Jews. This is an imminent threat, but you have gotten so buddy-buddy with all those psycho goyische conservatives that you cannot see who the real anti-semites are anymore! Wake up, pal! Oh yeah, the Palestinian suicide bombers? They are just acting out of frustrated rage against oppression, it is society’s fault, and if they all got a big hug and, say, a free greenhouse, they’d love their Jewish neighbors. Not like those nutty Christians. Them? I’ll tell you! No matter how many decades you live in peace next to them or work in the same office or shop at the same store or send your kids to the same orthodontist, they are just waiting, waiting, counting the days until they can sharpen their long knives on the pavement stone, slap on their stormtrooper hats and do some genocide. But, remember that even though this is true, you also cannot have a handgun, since guns are yucky.
Perhaps this is what happens in a democracy when there are real enemies out there and some do/can not adjust?
It might have been a fund raising tool if it were someone else, but I thought ADL was rolling in dough. Besides Foxman has a tendency to turn on the drama in his approach to victimization. He often sees hatred where others might see honest debate.
I lost a lot of respect for him and ADL some years ago when they decided to go into the diversity training business. Lost a lot more respect a few years ago when Foxman wrote an absurd letter to the editor of the NYT attacking David Horowitz for his stand on reparations for Blacks without addressing any of Horowitz’s points.
There’s an interesting article from Carl Pearlston(sp?) posted somewhere on the web (I think at Frontpage.com , but am not sure) saying why he no longer is a member of ADL. He discusses the mentality of liberal (political) orthodoxy that now seems to have taken over the organization.