Zionist Organization of America Defends Beck, Condemns Soros

It’s never pretty when a debate over charges of bigotry comes down to how many organizations with ethnic identities whose leaders have proclaimed themselves unelected spokesmen for an entire ethnicity of people have lined up on either side. In Beck v. Soros, one would think that the factual basis of what Beck said should be more important, but unfortunately that’s generally not how such high profile controversies usually play out.

While accusing Beck of anti-Semitism, “Holocaust exploitation,” and of labeling Soros as a “former Nazi” (which Beck simply did not come close to saying) among other things, one writer for The Jewish Journal was tawdry enough to suggest Beck’s problem is that he is a “non-Jewish pundit” who “simply do[esn’t] have enough bona fides in the Jewish community” to report the things that Beck has been reporting. Oddly, that writer Mark Paredes is a Mormon, but he’s apparently convinced the Jewish people are all on his side in defending Soros, claiming Beck’s “remarks were universally condemned in the Jewish press.”

Paredes is also “not convinced that Beck really loves Jews.” It is apparently irrelevant to Paredes – as well as MSM outlets claiming Beck is inventing conspiracy theories involving Jewish stereotypes out of his anti-Semitism – that the overwhelming majority of what Beck reports is taken directly from The Shadow Party by David Horowitz and Richard Poe almost to the point of plagiarism. Horowitz and Poe are not only both Jewish, but are about as anti-Semitic as Netanyahu. They are the ones originating these supposedly anti-Semitic, stereotyping conspiracy theories, not Beck. Apparently it is much easier for progressives and the MSM to attack the “bona fides” of Glenn Beck rather than trying to dismiss or discredit David Horowitz and Richard Poe as vicious anti-Semitics, or deal with the substance for that matter.

Regardless, the Zionist Organization of America has something to say about the notion of universal opposition to Beck or support of Soros in the Jewish community, both defending Beck, admonishing his attackers, and strongly condemning Soros in a press release earlier this week. Not surprisingly, this one hasn’t received much press. A google search on November 18, 2010 for “Zionist Organization of America” and “Beck” spanning the last week showed that no major news outlets – not even Fox News – had reported it, two days after the press release:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed its concern over the strong criticism that a number of American Jewish leaders and other prominent Jews in recent days have directed at Fox broadcaster, Glenn Beck, for his criticism of Israel/U.S.-basher, financier George Soros, regarding his behavior in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944.

In that year, George Soros’ father obtained forged papers and bribed a government official to save his son, George, then 14 years old, by taking him in as his alleged godson under a falsified Christian identity. In this capacity, George Soros accompanied his fake godfather on his appointed rounds as a government official, confiscating property from Jews who were to be deported to their deaths in Auschwitz. George Soros later said that he felt no guilt, remorse or difficulty whatsoever for being in this situation. In fact, he wrote in a forward to his father’s book, “these ten months [of the Nazi occupation] were the happiest times of my life … We led an adventurous life and we had fun together.”

Regarding this circumstance, Mr. Beck said recently on his radio show that Soros “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps. I am certainly not saying George Soros enjoyed that, even had a choice — I mean, he’s 14 years old. He was surviving. So I’m not making a judgment, that’s between him and G-d” (‘Soros enjoys taking countries down,’ November 10, 2010).

A number of American Jewish leaders condemned Mr. Beck, who happens to be a great supporter of Israel and the Jewish people, for these remarks, yet a 1998 interview with Soros conducted by Steve Kroft on ’60 Minutes’ shows that Beck was essentially correct:

Read more at ZOA.org.