Anti-Semitism rears up again on the Left

Thanks to a good link at Power Line, I learned that Richard Baehr has an excellent comment on the anti-Semitic propaganda that appeared at the mock impeachment the Senate Democrats conducted.

So the Democrats in Congress are now giving voice and credibility to the view that Israel was responsible for the Iraq war. And other Democrats, watching the hearing at the DNC, are hosting anti-Semites who argue that Israel had advance warning of the 9/11 attacks and is therefore responsible for allowing the attacks to occur. And even deeper into familiar anti-Semitic tropes: that Israelis withheld the information so as to benefit financially.

He notes that this is classic anti-Semitism, and that it appears under the Democratic Party's aegis:

This sounds exactly like classic anti-Semitism. These messages were not being conveyed on anti-Semitic web sites, or on Palestinian TV and radio on Thursday, but at a Democratic function from a meeting room in Congress, with more than 10% of the Democrats in Congress in attendance, and at Democratic National Headquarters. In all likelihood, these outrageous charges are now being communicated and rebroadcast throughout the Arab and Muslim world, with the imprimatur and legitimacy of the Democratic National Committee, and the US Congress as the reliable source.

Some ranking Democratics are desperately trying to disassociate themselves from these goings on, but Baehr points out that the activist groups attending the meeting were there as official guests, not party crashers:

Until late Friday, no Democratic Party official or Congressman, had expressed any discomfort with what happened. Now, we have a statement by Congressman Barney Frank, saying he was out of the conference room when the bad stuff happened in the mock impeachment trial, and that he thinks McGovern's view are noxious. So too, DNC Chairman Howard Dean released a statement saying the DNC rejects the hate literature that was being distributed in its own office. In fact, the activist groups that watched the meeting at the DNC, and handed out the moonbat conspiracy literature blaming Israel for 9/11, were there as guests of the DNC. No one at the DNC can claim that they were surprised that the "hearing" in Congress or the advocacy in their office took on an anti-Semitic slant. McGovern's views are well known (that is why he was invited by Conyers, presumably), and the activists were handing out their anti-Semitic literature openly to everyone in sight in the DNC office.

The only reason this whole disgraceful thing saw daylight was because Dana Milbank of the WaPo had the courage to report on it. The rest of Baehr's must read article focuses on the fact that the Democratic party is flirting more and more with anti-Semitism. He also makes the same point I've made before: namely, that Jews need to shed their long-standing allegiance to the Democratic party because it is not their party anymore. What I'd like to add to my previous comments is that Jews shouldn't be surprised by this turn of events. It is motivated, not only by the Democrats increasingly manic hatred of Bush -- and of everything that seems to support Bush, including the Jewish State of Israel -- but also by a long Socialist/Leftist anti-Semitic tradition. As Joshua Muravchik points out in his admirable book, Heaven on Earth : The Rise and Fall of Socialism, Karl Marx, a first generation Christian one step removed from his Jewish forebearers was violently anti-Semitic. It was he who first tied Communism/Socialism to anti-Jewish feeling. He was vehemently anti-Semitic, viewing Jews as the worst capitalists, worthy of nothing less than destruction. In this regard, it is worth remembering that, while the Nazis were fascist in their approach to politics, they were first and foremost Socialists. In other words, they simply layered their Leftist/Socialist economic doctrine over the Germans' long-standing antipathy to Jews. The same, of course, held true for the Communists. Those of us born before 1989 don't need to be reminded of the anti-Semitism that characterized Soviet Russia. And again, it was anti-Semitism that found fertile ground layered over centuries of traditional, Christian-based anti-Jewish thought. My point is that the Left continues to regard Jews as the worst excrescences of capitalism, and to react to them according. And as the American Left becomes more, well, Left, and as it becomes ever more in thrall to the European Left's love affair with the Palestinian political cause, we can only except increasing displays of the shabby anti-Semitism that befouled Congress last week.