Boston Globe defends mobbing of Jewish Republican

When it comes to Jews and Israel, the Boston Globe has a habit of inverting reality in the nastiest ways imaginable.

Decades ago, the Globe reported on a Palestinian who had been arrested after the bomb he was making blew up and blinded him. The Globe headline? “Israelis Arrest Blind Palestinian.” Really.

For years on the holiest Jewish day of Yom Kippur, when Jews repent for their personal sins, the Globe published op-eds by an anti-Israel Jewish activist who hectored Boston’s Jews to repent for “oppressing” the Palestinians.

And then there were all those articles through the years explaining that the Palestinians murdered Jewish people simply because they had no other choice.

So now comes Tom Mountain, a Jewish Massachusetts Republican official who, on Friday, Nov. 2, was blocked from his own office by a group of Democrats wearing Jewish prayer shawls while chanting that Republicans are the party of White Nationalism and are responsible for the mass murder of Jews in Pittsburgh. Mountain, understandably annoyed, told reporters that these people were “a disgrace to the Jewish people” and “an embarrassment to this country.” The mob of Democrats refused to let him through and the police had to physically haul them off.

Globe headline? “Mass. GOP official calls Jewish protesters ‘a disgrace’ and an ‘embarrassment.’”

Had the Globe any integrity at all, they would have reported—in either the headline or the lede—that Mountain himself is a Jew. Instead, the Globe downplayed that fact by obliquely referring to him later in the article as the “vice chair of the state GOP’s Jewish Committee.” That way, the story line the Globe aimed for—“GOP vs Jews”—was what came across to readers. In fact, what was being played out at the Republican Party’s Boston office was a seriously important story: the long-simmering American Jewish internal conflict about Israel and anti-Semitism seems to be going public. Jewish leftists who are politicizing everything, even the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, are being criticized—not lionized—in Jewish media outlets.

And of course the Globe is ignoring the bigger picture in all this: that while the murders of Jews in Pittsburgh were done at the hand of a classical anti-Semite—who declared, by the way, that he loathed Trump because Trump was surrounded and “controlled” by Jews—in fact, the much larger danger to Jews comes a newer form of anti-Semitism which portrays the Jewish state, not Judaism, as the prime evil.

The Jews of Europe are fleeing the continent not because the mobs that menace them cry out “Christ-killer!” as in days of old. The surge in Jewish emigration is caused by vicious left-wing anti-Zionist universalists who hate Jews because of Jewish particularism, and who hate all Western nationalisms—but not Palestinian nationalism.  These radical leftists are joined in their animus against Jews by violent Islamist immigrants to Europe whose hate for Jews seems historic and theological. We’re seeing this even here from some of the newly elected Democratic congresswomen.

Jew-haters of every type have always desired to eliminate Judaism or Jews. Christian and Muslims wanted Jews to convert, Nazism wanted Jews to die, Communism wanted Jews to be liberated from their heritage, and like the Nazis, today’s jihadis seek the destruction of the Jewish people.

So under the guise of “human rights,” all of these seemingly divergent groups have adopted “Palestine” as their cause. All libel Israel as the Jew among the nations. All promote “the apartheid state of Israel” as their meme. All mobilize their bases with the call for the destruction of the only Jewish state.

In America, too, the increasingly dangerous hostility to Jews on campus comes from the ideology of anti-Zionism, the belief that the Jewish state, among all others, is uniquely evil. There are no “human rights” protests against Iran, Saudi Arabia or China on American campuses. There is no campus movement to free black slaves from Muslim masters in Africa, or to rescue the Middle East Christians targeted for extinction by the Jihad. There might not be any neo-Nazi professors or classically anti-Semitic student groups on American campuses, but there is a plethora of anti-Israel student organizations that focus enmity on the Jewish state, and professors who use their podia to defame Jewish nationalism are a dime a dozen.

The Boston Globe, a progressive communication organ, follows this general anti-Israel script, as meticulously documented in studies by CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

Finally, an honest newspaper reporting on the Democrat siege and harassment of a Jewish Republican, would have examined the nature and motives of the group that went after Tom Mountain.

For the record: IfNotNow protests Jewish cultural events, such as Celebrate Israel festivals in Boston and New York, because “50 years of Occupation is nothing to celebrate.” Tom Mountain is only the latest Jewish victim of its blockade tactics; it has pulled similar stunts against both the ADL and AIPAC, and tried to shout down New York Times columnist Bret Stephens inside a San Francisco synagogue.

But the Globe (Pravda-on-the-Charles) has a political agenda: It deplores Trump and swoons over Israel-hating Jewish Democrats. A good argument can be made that, like him or not, President Trump has done more for Israel than any other president: not renewing the Iran deal, which would have assured that Iran would indeed obtain a nuclear weapon and use it to complete the Holocaust; and recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel when three previous presidents had promised but failed to do so.

And Trump did something that no other American president ever did. In response to the murder in Pittsburgh, the president said, “Through the centuries, the Jews have endured terrible persecution... and those seeking their destruction, we will seek their destruction.” Compare this statement with FDR’s perfidy during the mass slaughter of Jews.

So, Tom Mountain, the Globe smeared you as “White Republican man denigrates innocent, lovely Jews,” exactly like they nailed those Israelis who arrested that poor, innocent blind Palestinian. Not to fret: it’s just the Boston Globe being the Boston Globe.

Charles Jacobs is president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance.

Originally published in The Times of Israel.