Jackson, the Jews, and the Democrats - Jesse Jackson; includes related article

National Review, Nov 7, 1988 by Milton Himmelfarb, James Howard Meredith

IN RECENT WEEKS, accusations of anti-Semitism have been launched against the Bush campaign. Exposing and uprooting anti-Semitism should be a major concern for Jews and non-Jews alike, but where should the concern be focused? On the Republicans-considering the culpability, significance within their party, and treatment accorded Fred Malek? Hardly. Consider instead the Democrats, keeping in mind Jesse Jackson's culpability, his significance within their party, and treatment accorded him. Speaking as a Jew, I am saddened and alarmed by what Jackson shows about the Democratic Party, and by how Jews have reacted-or failed to react-to the threat he poses.

On nationwide television Jackson was asked why he would not repudiate his old comrade, the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. He answered, "It isn't necessary." On July 26 the New York Times published "Anti-Semitism in Chicago: A Stunning Silence," by Professor Eugene Kennedy of Loyola University. It began: "Virulent anti-Semitism has gripped Chicago's black community. Nobody morally powerful enough to try to combat it, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who lives here, has attempted to do so. It is so poisonous that the Reverend Andrew Greeley, a Roman Catholic priest and writer and a Chicagoan, has said, 'If I were Jewish, I'd be terrified.' . . . Why has he [Jackson) remained silent? As he campaigns for Governor Michael S. Dukakis, what conclusions can Jewish voters in Chicago-indeed, across the nation-draw from that silence?"

By coincidence or by design, alongside Professor Kennedy's piece was a report by columnist A. M. Rosenthal of a telephone call to him from Jackson. Rosenthal had written that Jackson "prides himself on reaching out to Cubans, Koreans, Mexicans, just about everybody, but has never found it in him to reach out so eagerly to Jews." Jackson told Rosenthal, "It is not true that I have not reached out to American Jews. . . . I have reached out time and again, and sometimes I reached out in pain." The reach has not extended to repudiating Farrakhan.

Three days later the Times ran a story from Chicago by one of its reporters, under a headline referring not to antiSemitism but to "Black-Jewish Hostility." It contained a statement ftom a certain Steve Cokely that said, "The AIDS epidemic is a result of doctors, especially Jewish ones, who inject AIDS into blacks." Louis Farrakhan says that Cokely is a fine fellow-it was in a series of "lectures" in Farrakhan's headquarters that Cokely delivered his observations about Jews-and that the reason why Jews do not like what he said is tha, "the truth hurts."

As for Jackson, the Times reported him as saying that he "had spoken out against anti-Semitism . . . including at a campaign appearance earlier this year in suburban Skokie, where a synagogue had been defaced with swastikas by neo-Nazis. Mr. Jackson, who said he did not know Mr. Cokely, said it was 'time to consider the source and move on. . . . I don't see anyone holding press conferences condemning Koch,' " Mr. Jackson added. (New York Mayor Ed Koch had said that a Jew would have to be crazy to vote for Jackson in the Democratic primary.)

FARRAKHAN AND COKELY draw from an immemorially murderous language: Jews kill (drink the blood of) Gentile children; Jews conspire to rule the world. A Chicago priest says that if he were a Jew he would be terrified. A Chicago rabbi is made of sterner stuff: he says it is necessary for blacks and Jews to "de-demonize" each other. "We have our fringe Jews, too, capable of making racist statements." With a rabbi like that to defend Jews, do Farrakhan and Cokely need to attack them?

Jackson is often admiringly described as a populist. (Jews might remember that another leading populist, Tom Watson of tbe early Populist Party, was responsible for the only anti-Semitic lynching-of Leo Frank-ever perpetrated on American soil.) Imagine a white populist with a record like Jackson's, mutatis mutandis, and with Jackson's power and position in the Democratic Party and in future Democratic Administrations. Imagine that the white populist was asked why he would not repudiate an old comrade who still headed, say, the Ku Klux Klan. Suppose he answered, "It isn't necessary."

Would his denouncers be denounced for divisiveness? When Mayor Koch said what he said, the sky fell on him. Would the sky fall on a black mayor for saying that blacks would have to be crazy to vote for the white populist with the KKK friend? Would liberal blacks vie with each other in favorably comparing their own sanity and black loyalty with the mayor's, insisting that to vote for the KKKer's friend is the tolerant, non-divisive thing to do? Would the black establishment be silent? Would Mario Cuomo chide the black mayor and praise the KKKer's friend? Would not a single important Democrat say a word for the black mayor? (Even Albert Gore, whom Koch supported in the primary, did not come to Koch's defense.) Would Harvard administrators blame the black mayor for tension between their black and white students?