Jason Maoz writes in The Jewish Press:
The Monitor’s oft-stated rule of thumb is that when a reporter quotes unnamed sources, those sources invariably buttress the reporter’s own viewpoint and agenda. Case in point: James D. Besser, the Washington correspondent for a handful of Jewish newspapers (the New York Jewish Week among them) who for the past several years has lamented the growing ties between members of the Christian Right and pro-Israel activists in the Jewish community.
In an article last week on the mounting woes of lobbyist Jack Abramoff — a Jew closely associated with several leading lights of the Christian Right, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and political consultant Ralph Reed — Besser conjured the old boogeyman of right-wing anti-Semitism, painting a stereotypical picture of conservatives whose latent Jew-hatred is so close to the surface that a political scandal is all it might take to unloose the Furies.
Besser kicked things off by stating that "Allegations against super lobbyist Jack Abramoff — almost always identified as an observant Jew in news stories — may play into traditional stereotypes about greedy Jews and revive the traditional anti-Semitism of the religious right, some analysts say…" — before proceeding to name just one such "analyst" in his article.
Put aside for a moment this bigoted notion of conservative Christians and their feelings toward Jews (a notion discredited time and again in recent years, most notably when a much predicted backlash in the wake of the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal never materialized and when fears of movie-goers turning into pogromists after viewing "The Passion of the Christ" proved unfounded).
