Posted on 03/12/2018 9:18:49 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Jewish groups are criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin after he suggested Russian minorities such as Jews or Tatars could be behind alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
Putin was speaking with NBC News Megyn Kelly as she repeatedly asked him about Russian involvement in the election. Last month, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly meddling in the 2016 presidential election, charging them with conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Maybe theyre not even Russians, he said. Maybe theyre Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked. Maybe they have dual citizenship. Or maybe a green card. Maybe it was the Americans who paid them for this work. How do you know? I dont know.
Putins comment caught the attention of the Anti-Defamation League. President Putin bizarrely has resorted to the blame game by pointing the finger at Jews and other minorities in his country, said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, in a statement. It is deeply disturbing to see the Russian president giving new life to classic anti-Semitic stereotypes that have plagued his country for hundreds of years.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Why do you feel the need to defend someone like that?
Reasonable people look at that comment and see it for exactly what it is, anti-semitic. Because it IS.
Why is it that you don’t?
Jews, most likely are doing something.
Well, he only threatened to nuke our allies in eastern Europe about nine years ago. He remains a strong ally of Iran too, who has been gunning for Israel recently. Wonder how much of a not-enemy that makes him.
It is a bit cynical, but well to keep in mind with someone like Putin. And to be fair, he might say the same of America.
Why do you keep pulling out the race card after it’s been made plain and clear to you that everyone can see right through it and nobody is buying that far-left fallacy?
Because only you and a small minority view it as some kind of “far-left fallacy”.
Reasonable people look at that and know exactly what he meant without having to parse it.
Words have meanings, and explaining it away by saying he meant something else doesn’t change the meaning.
Nobody appointed you to speak for Jews, and you do more harm than good with that scandalously dishonest approach.
Words do have meanings and you’ve been caught red-handed altering words to change meaning.
You are the anti-semite here in actual practice. People see what you do and say “if Jews were innocent of wrongdoing, they wouldn’t need such unconscionable tactics to defend themselves”.
You’re crying “wolf!” so many times that when a real wolf comes by, nobody is going to believe it.
What you’re doing is exactly, and indistinguishable from, all the lefties who try to shut down debate by calling us racists.
And you’re so over-the-top with it I have to wonder whether your actual intent is to produce a blowback against your stated position. You couldn’t act more precisely to achieve that effect.
I have little doubt that some domestic blacks, hispanics and liberal Jews colluded to influence the 2016 election in favor of the loser.
Putin is having a ball trolling us.
Can you blame him? It’s so tempting and easy.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL...
Greenblatt served as Director of the Impact Economy Initiative project at the Aspen Institute, which has been funded by George Soros through his Open Society Institute to the tune of a total of more than half a million dollars.
thoughtomator, I have not had any significant disagreements with you in my time on FR. I wished it hadn’t started now.
Without any provocation you accused me of “virtue signaling” which is an newer variation of the old “You belong on DU” or “You’re a liberal” theme. It is hackneyed and unoriginal enough that in and of itself it doesn’t bother me.
Another poster disagreed with my take on it, and stated his disagreement without resorting to an ad hominem attack, which I replied reasonably to.
I would have rather we could have had that same kind of discussion.
I am leaving that wide open, since I believe that is quite possible as well.
A little misleading headline. He actually said:
...Maybe theyre Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews,..
But hey what’s a little editing for clicks.
I was deployed to Uzbekistan. They seemed OK; more secular than Muslim, liked their vodka, Uzbek women wore whatever they pleased, spoke to us in English or Russian, and they all hated Afghanistan.
Putin referring to “Ukrainians, Tatars, & Jews” sounds like typical Muscovite contempt for non-Russians in general. Maybe he’ll start quoting from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion next.
Well, maybe that other poster isn’t Jewish like me and doesn’t end up on the ass end of the blowback of your behavior.
See, you don’t see the blowback because you’re not Jewish. But I do. And you are not helping us. You are hurting us.
Well, what do you want from CNN. Never mind Megyn.
That was a reasonable response.
thoughtomator, it is hard enough to constantly grapple with leftists, never mind my fellow Freepers, and particularly not someone whose posts I generally follow and enjoy...like yours.
I’ll accept your criticism as constructive criticism. Are we good?
Jews outside of Israel are minorities everywhere, often tiny ones, and as a result do not want to stick out and become the target of some popular passion. Being in the center of any conflict is the very last place we want to be in.
So if Putin lists Ukranians Tartars and Jews, picking Jews off the end of the list and calling a lot of attention to it, just sets us up to be targets. As nobody is picking Tartars out of that list and doing the same, this practice sticks out a lot, and it doesn’t look good on us.
We don’t want to be human shields in someone else’s fight, and the very last thing we need is to make Russia our enemy. There is no possible positive outcome from that course.
We’re totally capable of advocating our own interests on our own - a hell of a lot better than most, if I dare say so - and don’t need the help, however well-intended it may be. When non-Jewish conservatives talk about antisemitism, I cringe every time.
I respect your point of view on this, even if I disagree in some points.
If what you are saying is that people need to be thicker-skinned on some things like this, I agree.
Thanks for the civil response, thoughtomator.
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