Historical analysis of war can be tricky. Frequently it is difficult to understand the causes of a war. Alliances are made, and broken, for seemingly unfathomable reasons. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is often cited as the cause for the deadliest war in world history. But others have argued that as tempers were rising, Turkey’s promise to close the Dardanelles if trouble started was what prompted England to declare war on Germany. Who knew that the gross exaggeration of an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin would end with the U.S. dropping both napalm and cluster bombs on Cambodia, destabilizing a government, ending in genocide?
The War on Christmas is similarly difficult to deconstruct. For the last couple of years, right wing Christians, Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, and O’Reilly have been increasingly vocal with their allegations of attacks by non-Christians on Christmas. They decry what they describe as an assault on American Christian values by non-believers. The situation is considered so grave that the “Liberty Counsel” has organized a group of lawyers prepared to defend your right to wish your neighbor a “Merry Christmas.”
When they say non-believers, of course, they mean Jews. The 2000 census showed that there is almost double the number of Jews in this country than the next largest Non-Christian group. (Muslims).
Lest be there any doubt that this is an attack on Jews, the O’Reilly’s have identified department stores and retailers as being the leaders in the fight against Christmas. They don’t attack politicians who say “Happy Holidays” (G.W. Bush) or media that has “Holiday Parties.” (Fox News) They attack retailers who use words like “Holiday.” To most of Christian America the phrase “Department Store” means Jew. Still, not surprisingly, the right is not confident. What if their followers, who aren’t too intelligent, fail to find the code words intelligible? Thus they pursue simultaneous attacks on the ACLU. In fact that organization has sued to allow Christian Baptism in rivers in public parks. It has acted on behalf of a ‘Christian’ student who wanted a biblical passage on her page in the Year Book. But ACLU is known to be a Jewish organization, one that is not only in the war against Christmas, but also the war against Christianity itself.
This form of anti-Semitism is not new in our country. Henry Ford talked of how the “International Jew” was destroying our country in the thirties. In the fifties we had the KKK complaining of “department” stores putting up decorations that were from the evil jUnited Nations, and not sufficiently Christian.
What is new is the lack of a response to this hate speech from Jewish Americans. Previously Jews fought back. There was a boycott of Ford cars. There were letters to the editor and demonstrations against the positions espoused by the KKK.
I would love to have some help understanding why. Do American Jews feel so assimilated that they need not respond? I think not. Do they believe that the religious right has stopped being anti-Semitic as they have seemed pro-Israel. No. They are happy to have the help of the born-again in supporting Israel . But no thinking Jew forgets the role that the “Rapture” plays in this support; no one forgets who really is the King of the Jews, the King of Israel, in the eyes of the Christian conservative. It might seem far-fetched, but I have a theory that might explain this silence as anti-Semitism is so openly promoted.
It might be akin to the reasoning I expressed in my post of Dec 5. I disputed the idea that Sen. Lieberman was about to be appointed Secretary of Defense. I wrote that there was no way Bush would appoint a Jew to lead the occupation of a Muslim state. This was particularly true, I thought, because Jewish people had been the prime proponents of the war on Iraq. Guys like, Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith were instrumental in leading us into Baghdad. Those three were the main movers who took us into war. Since then, they have chosen to take a back burner, and are quite quiet about what is now happening in Iraq.
Do American Jews feel that they must be quiet now, as the U.S.is fighting a war in Iraq that is so important to Israel ? Are they concerned that they cannot complain of the O’Reilly’s without seeming ungrateful? What does their lack of a response to the “War on Christmas” say about the current political climate?
