The Times profiles Abe Foxman

In this week’s Magazine.

The attitude is one of condescension towards Foxman and the ADL.

With anti-Semitism apparently waning, the A.D.L. might well have moved away from its original identity in favor of either promoting tolerance and diversity or leading the nonsectarian fight against extremism. But for Foxman, fighting anti-Semitism was always the core of the mission.

I’m sorry, but this line alone portrays perfectly the author’s bias. Gee, anti-Semitism isn’t as bad as it used to be, so why don’t we use the organization that was set up to defend against anti-Semitism to, I don’t know, do something else?

Traub’s conclusion: Foxman is an anachronism. Apparently, anti-Semitism is going to up and die any day now, and we won’t have to guard against it ever again. And that’s when there will be fairies on bluebells, and lions lying down with lambs, and Jews will return to their homes in Arab and European countries, and everyone will welcome them with open arms!

Foxman is an anachronism. The demographic of which he is a member — Holocaust survivor — is rapidly disappearing. Younger people don’t know quite what to make of him. In a recent column in The Jewish Journal, David A. Lehrer, formerly the head of the A.D.L.’s Los Angeles office, observed that Jews are now the most widely admired religious group in America, as well as the most successful, and lamented that Jewish leaders — Foxman specifically — continue to harp on Jewish “insecurity” and the threat of anti-Semitism. Lehrer says that when he raised his view that the A.D.L. had to learn to speak to this new, confident but less affiliated generation of Jews, Foxman dismissed it out of hand. The generational question does not interest him. “It’s not my job to judge whether they should feel beleaguered or not,” Foxman snapped when I raised the subject. “I do feel. And I’ve got news for you: Every one of them, in their maturing process, will experience this.”

Puh-leeze. Leave it to the New York Times to declare anti-Semitism on its deathbed, even as it is rising all over the world. Jews make up the overwhelming majority of victims of religious hate crimes in America. But yes, Abe Foxman is an anachronism.

He has been declared so by the Times. And the Times is never wrong about Jewish issues, right? The Times, remember, is the Jewish-owned newspaper that refused to publish stories of the Holocaust as it was happening.

Batting oh-for-two here, as far as I can tell.

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5 Responses to The Times profiles Abe Foxman

  1. Sabba Hillel says:

    At a minimum they are 0 for 70, since they have failed each year for the last 70 years (or more).

  2. Lynn B. says:

    Not to mention, the ADL is already devoting a great deal of its energy (IMO sometimes too much energy) to “promoting tolerance and diversity” and “leading the nonsectarian fight against extremism” already. E.g.:

    New York, NY, November 2, 2006 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) strongly condemned the brutal assault of a Pakistani man in Brooklyn and praised the NYPD and Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office for apprehending the alleged perpetrators, five Jewish teenagers, and charging them with a hate crime.

    And there’s a lot more where that came from.

  3. Chris L. says:

    “It’s tempting to compare Abe Foxman with Al Sharpton…”

    Really? I didn’t think so.

  4. Michael Lonie says:

    Those who consider Foxman an anachronism forget the ancient wisdom, that in every generation they rise up to kill us. I don’t necessarily agree with everything the ADL thinks is worthy of its attention, but there will always be antisemites to chastise. Nor is that just a Jewish concern, because the experience of the 20th Century, at least, shows that those who are most hostile to the Jews are pretty horrible to everybody else too. Non-Jews condone antisemitism at their own peril, as the French are likely to learn in the near future.

  5. Gary Rosen says:

    The New York Times is not “Jewish owned”. Pinch Sulzberger is an Episcopalian who loudly rejects his Jewish heritage. By the way, I went to high school with Pinch. If he hadn’t inherited his job, he wouldn’t have gotten as far in journalism as Jimmy Olsen.

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