In search of anti-semitism: what Christians provoke what Jews? Why? By doing what? - And vice versa

National Review, Dec 30, 1991 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Meanwhile, he had begun publishing a syndicated column.

Early in 1986 I scheduled a private dinner with him at which I told him that I thought he should know that in his syndicated column he was gradually giving his readers the impression that he was obsessed on the subject of Israel. More, I told him that unlike obsessions with, say, Nicaragua or China or even Russia, an obsession with Israel at the expense of Israel gives rise to suspicions of an awakening anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism, I told him, is a mortal disease in his profession. I even joked about it a little. William Scranton (I remember saying) had for a generation been among the two or three most influential Republicans in the country. Then President-elect Nixon sent him to the Middle East to survey the scene. He returned to say he thought the Nixon Administration should be "more evenhanded" in managing the problems of the Middle East, and he has never been heard from since!" We both laughed. One does laugh when acknowledging inordinate power, even as one deplores it. It would not have occurred to me, that evening, to suggest to Joe that he avoid anti-Semitism. Because to do so would have sounded as patronizing and unnecessary as to warn him against contracting syphilis.

But six months later I judged it to be crisis time. I called the senior staff of NATIONAL REVIEW together. We met three times, twice with Joe. What led to those meetings, and what issued from them, is compactly explained in the editorial note I published in the issue of July 4, 1986:

IN RE JOE SOBRAN AND ANTI-SEMITISM

Complaints have reached us concerning a series of columns written by my colleague Joseph Sobran under the aegis of his newspaper syndicate. It is charged that these columns constitute anti-Semitism. In the columns, Mr. Sobran, among other things, has declared that Israel is not an ally to be trusted; surmised that the New York Times endorsed the military strike against Libya only because it served its Zionist editorial line; and ruminated that the visit of the Pope to a synagogue had the effect of muting historical persecutions of Christians by Jews. In that last column, Mr. Sobran, exasperated, wrote, "But it has become customary recently to ascribe all Jewish-Christian friction to Christians. If a Jew complains about Christians, Christians must be persecuting him. If a Christian complains about Jews, he is doing the persecuting--in the very act of complaining. It simply isn't fair." And in his most recent column on the theme, Joe Sobran complains that he is criticized for being anti-Semitic unwarrantedly: "I find that the more I say what I really think, the more I'm accused of thinking something else." Again he says that "the word 'anti-Semite' is more potent than most of the charges of bigotry that are flung around these days. It carries the whiff of Nazism and mass murder. It means,' as a friend of mine puts it, 'that you ultimately approve of the gas chambers."'

It is appropriate, on my own behalf and on that of my other senior colleagues, to comment on what is becoming a public quarrel involving Joe Sobran and those who impute anti-Semitism to him.