Luke Ford

The Jewish Libertarian blogs:

Don’t think I’m upset because she said “How many #$%ing Jews are there in the US?” I couldn’t help agreeing with her tweets. The republican obsession with Israel, due the Evangelicals, is quite distasteful and dangerous. Her sudden distaste with Republicans was actually quite refreshing.

How many of us have used that language describing a different group of people? Almost all of us. And she wasn’t even insulting Jews in the sentence. But HOLOCAUST HOLOCAUST, it’s immediately goes into “antisemitism” and reductio ad Nazism and Ann Coulter is the next Eva Braun.

She’s a bad person, but not because of this tweet. And she certainly doesn’t hate Jews any more than she hates pretty much everybody. She’s not anti-semitic. She’s misanthropic.

How many #$%ing Jews spend their time bomb sniffing for anything less than sensitive written about them?

Philip Weiss writes September 17, 2015: Everyone is talking about one thing today, anti-immigrant activist Ann Coulter’s outburst on twitter during the Republican debate last night about the Israel pandering by the candidates. Salon characterizes it as anti-Semitic, and John Podhoretz is also worked up about it– “Holy shit, Ann. Shame on you.” They refer to a hate-tweet about “fucking Jews,” though Coulter was raising a legitimate issue.

Her tweets began like this.

Cruz, Huckabee Rubio all mentioned ISRAEL in their response to: “What will AMERICA look like after you are president.”

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 17, 2015

That’s a fair point, right. It happened again and again during the Iran debate. Politicians were asked about the U.S. and they talked about Israel. Then came this tweet, which is getting all the headlines. Salon calls it “gratuitously anti-semitic.”

How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States? — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 17, 2015

Leaving aside the invective, this is a fair question. The answer is 2.2 percent overall and even in states where Jewish voters are said to be crucial, New Jersey and Florida, the numbers are actually fairly low, at 5.9 percent and 3.3 percent. New Hampshire, .8 percent, Iowa .2 percent. The point is, The candidates are bending over backwards for Sheldon Adelson’s money, not for primary voters. That’s why Jeb Bush has tacked right on foreign policy and hired Paul Wolfowitz and thrown Jim Baker under the bus, to get money from the Republican Jewish Coalition. If they were doing this for the Koch Brothers, the media would be all over it. Remember that Adelson called for the U.S. to nuke Iran, and this man has power over the candidates!

Coulter’s next tweet:

Maybe it’s to suck up to the Evangelicals.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 17, 2015

Maybe she was being intellectually honest; there are a bunch of evangelical Christian Zionists out there. Then she said:

How to get applause from GOP donors: 1) Pledge to start a war 2) Talk about job creators 3) Denounce abortion 4) Cite Reagan 5) Cite Israel. — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 17, 2015

Right, donors are pushing a warmongering neocon agenda in the Republican Party.

Coulter’s big offense was exclaiming about “fucking Jews” on twitter– in between anti-immigrant invective. The issue here is that the power of the Israel lobby derives from conservative Jewish wealth. There are many ways to counter this influence, including other Jews who are critical of Israel giving money; but sunlight is the best disinfectant. When an issue is suppressed, people are going to explode.

This Orthodox rabbi below finds a connection between Megyn Kelly’s insufficiently angry reaction to Ann Coulter’s Jews tweet Wednesday night and the Holocaust.

By Rabbi Philip Lefkowitz:

This may surprise you – I don’t give a fig about Colter’s remark. My concern is manifest regarding the interview of Ann Colter on the Fox News program, “The Kelly File”, and Megyn Kelly’s reaction to her disgusting statement.

Beginning the interview by sharing Colter’s vile remark and the negative response to it from both the left and the right. Kelly asked Colter, “So do you want to take it back?” Colter’s immediate response was “no.” She then began to qualify her answer by saying that perhaps the remark would have been better directed toward the Evangelical community, note – no pejorative used for the Evangelicals.

My English teacher in eighth grade, Gertrude Keys, made me keenly aware of the parts of speech by teaching us how to diagram sentences. I was required to designate the subject and the predicate the nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs. The concern levied by all regarding Colter’s remark had nothing to do with the issue of who she should have leveled it against or if in fact it had any merit. Rather the critiques leveled concerned the ADJECTIVE she used to modify the NOUN Jews – the most widely used pejorative in American English today. Kelly, usually a very good interviewer who gets to the root of the matter simply avoided the salient issue in Colter’s remark and moved on to another subject.

The first thought that came to my mind was the 1961 movie, “Judgment at Nuremberg.” For those unfamiliar with the movie, here is a brief review.

“After the end of World War II, the world gradually became aware of the full extent of the war crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich. In 1948, a series of trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, by an international tribunal, headed by American legal and military officials, with the intent of bringing to justice those guilty of crimes against humanity. However, by that time most of the major figures of the Nazi regime were either dead or long missing, and in the resulting legal proceedings American judges often found themselves confronting the question of how much responsibility someone held who had “just followed orders.” Judgment at Nuremberg is a dramatized version of the proceedings at one of these trials, in which Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) is overseeing the trials of four German judges — most notably Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) and Emil Hahn (Werner Klemperer) — accused of knowingly sentencing innocent men to death in collusion with the Nazis.”

The most intriguing aspect of this movie was the fascination the American, Judge Haywood (Spencer Tracy), had with the motivations of the famous German jurist, Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster),, whose brilliant legal decisions were well-known to Haywood. Haywood could not understand how such a man deeply committed to human rights and freedom as evidenced by these decisions would be complicit in the horrific activities of the Nazi regime. Eventually, in a magnificent speech Judge Janning explains what had transpired and defines himself as “human excrement.” He admits he knew at the outset, what Hitler was all about but remained silent because Hitler gave renewed pride to the German people after the humiliation they suffered at Versailles. The price of the lives of a few Jews were of little consequence. In the end, he thought Hitler would be rejected by the sophisticated German people. When that didn’t happen it was too late for him to do anything about it.

Of course Megyn Kelly is not an internationally recognized jurist and we’re not talking about a society similar to the Germany of. Post-World War I, or are we?

The patriotism of my youth has waned. Government is seen as unresponsive to the needs of the people by many of all political stripes. The economy has been in the doldrums for years with no bright future ahead for our youth. As in post-World War I Germany, there is a growing need to find someone to blame – a scapegoat. Is it the liberal big spending politicians, or Wall Street and the uber rich or the influential lobbyists or is it a particular grouping of individuals,?

Why did not Kelly immediately pounce upon Coulter when she refused to take back her remark about the “f—ing Jews”? Why? Am I not correct in assuming that Kelly would have reacted immediately and decisively if that adjective, that pejorative, was fixed to the words Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, or Muslims? Why didn’t she react?

They don’t bother making coherent arguments. They simply seek to destroy her.

Fox News had Ann Coulter on right after the second GOP debate:

I’ve been talking to various Jews about this controversy and this is a summary of what I’m hearing:

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. It is the typical ADL playbook where the slightest innocuous comment is used to wholly discredit someone.

Does making the comment, even if it were “vile” which I don’t think it is, justify destroying a person’s career? How many books has she written? How many columns has she written? Who among pundits has been as influential in bringing an issue to the fore in American politics as she has with immigration? How many commentators are unwilling to debate persons with whom they disagree because somehow or other that would legitimize them? Ann Coulter will debate anybody on any topic anywhere.

It is interesting that she was dropped for the column she wrote for National Review in the aftermath of 9-11 (when she said invade their countries, kill their religious leaders and Christianize them.) She also survived the kerfuffle when in her interview with Donnie Deutsch she said that Christianity is in effect perfected Judaism. This is of course the correct theological view from the standpoint of Christians, regardless of denomination, but Jews are so used to politicians and columnnists buttering us up that they couldn’t handle this.

Anyway, we shall see how this plays out. The problem is that the people who are condemning her have so much invested in wresting either contrition from her or marginalization of her, that if they fail, it may weaken them and open the door to much more biting criticism that may in fact be anti-Semitic.

It is good that you are sticking up for her by highlighting all of the out of control condemnations of her.

It is important to really figure out what she was saying.

When she asked rhetorically how many fucking Jews are there in this country, that is open to two interpretations: (1) that despite their small number Jews wield too much influence, especially in the Republican party or (2) the Republicans are needlessly pandering to the Jews, Jewish interests, Israel and Evangelicals since there is no need to dwell on the confluence of views of Republican candidates.

Neither is anti-Semitic although the first interpretation does call in question Jewish power and influence, something that organized Jewry has consistently (1) downplayed and (2) pounced upon and punished those who espouse such views by labeling them anti semites and getting them ostracized.

You are a firm believer in free speech and in fearlessly pointing out where there is Jewish influence and power.

What bugs me about Coulter’s critics are:

In the case of “conservatives”, they criticize leftists, liberals and Democrats as being too politically correct and afraid of honest discussion, calling them “pearl clutchers, delicate little flowers” and people who go their “fainting couches” when confronted with micro-aggressions.

What Ann wrote is not especially offensive, especially in the context of her string of tweets during the debate, yet the “conservatives” feel the need to distance herself from them. This leads me to believe that many of the “right wing websites” PJ Media, Hot Air, Powerline, American Thinker, are in fact basically what pretend to be American conservative promoting sites, but in reality are simply pro Israel sites with the American political stuff serving simply as window dressing.

In the case of the Jewish Press and Jewish Rabbis condemning Coulter, I wonder how many of them publish her or read her with any regularity. I do realize she was a featured columnist for IJR) and if they do, if they share any views with her. Jews are traditionally liberal, consistently voting for Democrats and almost all elected national officials are Democrats (Sanders, Boxer, Feinstein, Franken, Blumenthal) and the Obama administration has many Jews in appointed positions, most significantly for financial decisions, Jack Lew and Janet Yellen. So I suspect that many if not most of the criticism of Coulter is coming from persons who don’t share her political views and are using this as an opportunity to either take her down a notch or sideline her permanently (a la Joe Sobran)

In the case of the liberal press, it is also seen as a means to marginalize Coulter and her views.

I realize you are a small voice against this, but you are an Orthodox Jew. She has been supported by others who are not widely read, such as Ilana Mercer, and by Mickey Kaus, but they are hard pressed to influence the conventional wisdom once the juggernaut is under way.

Many critics of Jews rejoiced in Ann Coulter’s Wednesday night tweets.

I see the world as full of different groups with different interests. The pro-Israel crowd is sometimes pro-America but sometimes not. The pro-America crowd is sometimes pro-Israel but sometimes not.

In the Middle East, the stronger Israel is, the weaker the Arabs appear.

England’s foreign policy for centuries has been based on dividing its continental competitors and encouraging them to feud with each other. Israel’s foreign policy, at times, reminds me of this.

About 95% of American Jews are Ashkenazi and identify as white. Jews generally prefer whites to other races, prefer to marry whites than other races, and prefer to live around whites. A tiny number of American Jews, however, loudly proclaim they are not white. Why? Because the flight from white is massively incentivized.

Jews leaders in the West have generally tried to make their Gentile host nations more tolerant of diversity, more multi-cultural, multi-racial, more divided, and less cohesive. They want Gentile nations to be user-friendly for Jews. For instance, every major American Jewish organization including the Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel supports immigration amnesty.

Former ADL head Abraham Foxman said in 2013: “How do we balance the drive for assimilation with the interests of our community? That’s the Catch-22 of the ADL. We make America as user-friendly to Jews as possible. So, who’s worried about Jews wanting to be Jews? But that’s been the struggle in American Jewish life for as long as I can remember.”

When critics of Jews complain about “Jewish supremacy,” they don’t mean that Jews are supreme in everything. They don’t mean that Jews dominate the energy industry or that Jews dominate white nationalist movements or basketball or farming or extreme sports. They mean that Jews enjoy disproportionate influence in certain sectors of society, such as media and banking and politics. This seems true to me.

On the other hand, you could convincingly argue that blacks are the most important people in this country because they shape all our discussions about crime and punishment, welfare, education, and the like. They are the most likely to riot. They have many gifted charismatic speakers who command your attention.

On the other hand, you could argue that the Japanese are the superior race or the Germans or the Chinese. You could complain about the Saudi Lobby and have very good reasons for your complaints.

I don’t get in a tizzy when people accurately point out black power, Mexican power, latino power, Jewish power, Saudi power, Arab power, Chinese power, Japanese power, etc. Many groups exercise disproportionate power in different parts of life, including Jews. Pointing out the obvious should not be a thought crime deserving of expulsion from polite society. Adding the word “f*******” to a group is not heinous. Only a wuss who lacks self-awareness gets upset about that.

Here’s a classic smear you’ll often hear around your Shabbos table — guilt by non-association.

Making logical sense is not the point. Getting angry and outraged and intimidating your critics is the point.

Forward.com: In a reference to the Republican Party debate, Iran’s Supreme Leader’s decried on Twitter that “presidential candidates try to satisfy Zionists.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei referred to Wednesday night’s CNN-sponsored debate in a tweet on Thursday, part of a series of anti-Israel tweets.

In a follow-up tweet, Khamenei reiterated a claim he made earlier this month that Israel will not last:

US govs put their people under Zionists custody.Isn’t it a shame that presidential candidates try to satisfy Zionists&prove their servitude?— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) September 17, 2015

Zionist regime is an imposed regime, made through coercion; no entity made by coercion would last. This regime will not survive either.11/13— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) September 17, 2015

On Wednesday night, conservative political pundit Ann Coulter similarly slammed the Republican candidates for pandering to “f—ing Jews.”

Khamenei also called for the West Bank to be “armed to be ready for defense.”

The Washington Jewish Week does not bother to form an argument, it just hurls insults at her.

Link: Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has a reputation for sharp words and jarring rhetoric. But she went way too far in a Twitter post during the final minutes of last Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate. Following a number of references to Israel by debate participants, Coulter Tweeted: “How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?” In doing so, not only did she join two words that should never go together, she went way over the line of what constitutes appropriate speech and into the territory of offensive, hateful drivel. Coulter should be ashamed of herself — but she appears to have no shame.

The ADL called Coulter’s remark “ugly, spiteful and borderline anti-Semitic.” We will go farther: Coulter’s remark was anti-Semitic, plain and simple. Although Coulter markets herself as someone “who stirs the pot,” her outrageous, very public utterance crossed the line of decency, and reflects a level of disrespect and hatred that cannot be tolerated.

For some, Coulter’s foul mouthed anti-Semitism comes as no surprise. They point to the fact that after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Coulter proposed: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” And in 2007, she told an interviewer that she wants her dream America to be completely Christian, with “Jews to be perfected, as they say,” meaning that Jews should be converted to Christianity. And there is more — but none of it worth repeating.

Unfortunately, Coulter’s most recent ugly rhetoric obscures the fact that that a lot of substantive policy discussions actually took place among the presidential contenders at the second debate. But that didn’t seem to be of much interest to Coulter. She was much more focused on the “f—ing Jews.”

We condemn Coulter’s remark, and condemn her bigotry. Ann Coulter is a hateful noisemaker, who should be ignored.