FEATURED JOBS
Abe Foxman is in an enviable position. He gets to decide when we should and should not be upset with people – even our fellow Jews – if their true colors happen to come out.
Case in point: the ADL national chief says we shouldn’t hold Henry Kissinger accountable for saying (nearly 40 years ago) that if the Soviet Union throws its Jews into gas chambers, it is “not an American concern.”
Oh really, Abe? Who exactly made you king of the Jews? Aren’t you the guy who freaks out every time someone in Riga or Bangladesh says something remotely anti-Semitic? But we should give ol’ Hank a free ride?
Here’s the deal: recently-released Nixon White House tapes from 1973 have the German-born secretary of state telling his boss – after a meeting with Golda Meir in which she pleads for American pressure on the Soviets to release the Jews there – that U.S. foreign policy does not include freeing Soviet Jews. “If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern,” he is heard saying.
Those are chilling words, especially coming from someone who fled Nazi Germany as a child and likely lost plenty of relatives in the Shoah.
In an e-mail to the JTA Wire Service, Kissinger rebuffed all calls for an apology – natch—and said the comments should be viewed in the context of the times. (Sorry, but when was turning a blind eye to potential genocide OK?) He also notes that Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union rose dramatically during the Nixon/Kissinger years. (Isn’t that sort of like saying, “Well, yeah I said that, but some of my best friends are Soviet Jews”?)
Perhaps just as infuriating, though, is Foxman’s response. First, the ADL issued a statement saying Kissinger’s remarks are a reminder that “even great individuals are flawed.” Also, “Dr. Kissinger’s contributions to the safety and security of the U.S. and Israel have solidly established his legacy as a champion of democracy and as a committed advocate for preserving the well-being of the Jewish state of Israel.”
In an interview with JTA, Foxman said of Kissinger, “He worked in an atmosphere that was intimidatingly anti-Semitic toward Jews. We need to understand the intimidation under which it occurred.”
Hmmm, so because Nixon and others in the nation’s capital back then were less-than-P.C., we should excuse that kind of comment, from a Holocaust survivor of all people?
Sorry, Abe, but I’ve got to agree with Menachem Rosensaft of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants when he says, in an interview with the New York Jewish Week, “Now that Kissinger’s true nature has been exposed, the Jewish community and Jewish institutions must draw the appropriate consequences. We now come to the realization that as far as he was concerned, human rights in general were an irrelevancy. He needs to know that when he is in the company of Jews, we will know precisely who he is and we hold him in contempt.”
History will take care of Kissinger, I’m certain. But why does Abe Foxman get to decide who gets a free pass right now?
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