Foxman's Fearmongering

The Jewish Press ^ | Jason Maoz

[alan alda]

For a media columnist facing a deadline and a slow news week, Abraham Foxman is truly a gift that keeps on giving. The national director of the Anti-Defamation League can barely open his mouth without inviting incredulity and ridicule from anyone not currently on the ADL’s payroll (and probably many who are).

Foxman’s latest foray into the absurd came earlier this month when, in a speech at the ADL’s national conference in New York, he drew an apocalyptic picture of conservative Christians laying waste to the citadels of American democracy and urged organized Jewry to come together to man the ramparts.

“Today we face a better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before,” Foxman told his audience. “Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America.”

Foxman warned that conservative Christian groups have “built infrastructures throughout the country” as part of their effort “to ‘Christianize’ all aspects of American life, from the halls of government to the libraries, to the movies, to recording studios, to the playing fields and locker rooms of professional, collegiate, and amateur sports; from the military to SpongeBob SquarePants....”

Whew! Either contributions are seriously down at the ADL or Foxman was suffering the kind of acute withdrawal familiar to all publicity addicts who haven’t seen their name or mug in the paper or on the tube for any period exceeding 72 hours.

Which raises the question of why publications like the Forward and The Jewish Week, both of which featured Foxman’s outburst as front-page news, continue to cruelly feed Foxman’s addiction. A little tough love would seem in order here. If Foxman called a press conference and no one showed up, would he make a sound (and would the public be any worse off)?

Political activist Jeff Ballabon told the Forward that the “ADL’s assault on Christians is classic Foxman: fund raising by fearmongering.”

Foxman a fearmonger? Consider this: The ADL commissioned a poll, to which Foxman made reference in his speech, showing that nearly 64 percent of Americans believe religion is under attack, 56 percent say creationism ought to be taught in school, and 64 percent have no problem with religious symbols being displayed in public buildings. Speaking to reporters after the speech, here’s how Foxman spun the poll’s findings, according to the Forward’s E.J. Kessler:

“If 60 percent think religion is under attack, who do they think is attacking them? Hollywood, the media and the ACLU? And who is behind those three institutions? The Jews, right?”

These are the remarks of a man intent on reading the darkest of implications where it is far from obvious that any exist. It’s as though Foxman wants to feed the perception among some Jews that conservative Christians opposed to liberal policies are by definition opposed to Jews — and the perception among some conservative Christians that the words “Jewish” and “liberal” are interchangeable.

In a biting opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post, author and essayist Hillel Halkin took Foxman to task for hypocritically complaining about Christian conservatives doing precisely what Jewish groups like the ADL have been doing for decades — attempting to influence social and cultural mores in the courts of law and public opinion.

Halkin wondered “whether there is any wisdom, from the American Jewish perspective, in declaring war on a Christian public that in recent years has been Israel`s strongest supporter in the United States” and “whether, in a huge country in which Jews form barely 2% of the population and church-going Christians an estimated 40%, Jews should be telling Christians, as does Foxman, that they have no right to campaign democratically for what they perceive to be their own values.”

Jews, Halkin continued, “are hardly threatened as Jews” by the politics of conservative Christians, but they will indeed feel threatened “if there is ever a Christian backlash against them, which sooner or later will happen if believing Christians come to view the Jewish community not merely as liberal but as anti-Christian.”

A Christian backlash against Jews? Why, business would never be better for the ADL!

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Jason Maoz is senior editor of The Jewish Press. He can be reached at jmaoz@jewishpress.com

[sageb1]

Thanks for posting this. Foxman is a miserable excuse for a human being. He and others who think like him sadden me.

[talleyman]

There is no shortage of dangerous idiots.