Cut the antisemitism crap

In a desperate attempt to smear MoveOn, the right wing will stop at nothing -- including cavalier charges of antisemitism. Someday, the right wing's cries of wolf will result in a dangerously slow and indifferent response to actual anti-semitism.

Here's the background: somewhere in MoveOn's open -- O-P-E-N -- forum, some commenters of unknown provenance posted anti-semitic slurs which were promptly removed.

Do critics not know about comments? Perhaps not. It's difficult to say with any authority whether ignorance is any kind of mitigating factor here, or whether it's simply cowardly smear tactics. But Washington Times columnist (and far-right Manhattan Institute think-tank fellow) Robert Goldberg, ought to have known about open forums after the embarrassingly similar allegation by Lanny Davis in the Wall St. Journal just weeks before.

In that case, Lieberman-buddy Davis sought to smear Ned Lamont by plucking comments from an open forum of his and charging that Lamont was antisemitic. A short time later on the Al Franken show, he had to admit that he had no idea what he was talking about. WSJ has yet to print a retraction.

So now that the Olin-funded Goldberg and others are out there, dangerously pushing the false rumor that MoveOn is antisemitic, responsible Jewish groups have come together to call them out (sign the petition here). Not just to support MoveOn, but to declare that this an outrage.

In a defense of MoveOn in the Forward, former Rep. Sam Gejdensen wrote:

"The quest for power, political and otherwise, can tempt people to play on others' fears rather than their hopes. But fear is not a Jewish value. On many occasions in the Torah, God commands our ancestors, al tira, (do not fear). To be a Jew is to refuse to give into fear, but rather to live from a position of tikva (hope)."