"Jews Can't Fly"

This morning, I received a viral email under the subject heading "Gratitude!" from a friend and long-time supporter of Israel. It contained an extensive exerpt of an interview given by Dr. Arieh Eldad, an Israeli plastic surgeon and member of the Israel Knesset, to the publication New English Review.

In it, Dr. Eldad described how a young woman from Gaza became a suicide bomber after having been treated for severe burns by Israeli plastic surgeons. To add to the heinous nature of her intended crime (she was caught before she had a chance to carry it out), she and her bomb were headed for the very hospital that treated her. Dr. Eldad concluded his story by saying, "This is only one example of the war between Jews and Muslims in the Land of Israel. It is not a territorial conflict. This is a civilizational conflict, or rather a war between civilization & barbarism."

Fair enough. However, the next line, "Bibi gets it, Obama does not" sounded suspiciously un-Israeli-Parlimentarian. Ever the skeptic, I looked up the "Gratitude!" story on Snopes. The story is true (except for the way in which the woman received her burns), and is indeed Dr. Eldad's account. That is, everything up to and including "a war between civilization and barbarism." The line "Bibi gets it, Obama does not," along with the usual pleas to pass the email along, were added by someone else later.

This is a classic example of how the American right takes a mostly-accurate story and twists it to slam our President. In fact, this is the second example I've seen in as many days.

There's a story going around that Delta Airlines is entering into a partnership with Saudi Arabian Airlines, which will require that Delta Airlines refuse to fly Jews on any plane that lands in Saudi Arabia. In actuality, the story is a little more complicated than that (you can read about it in The Jewish Week).

However, that hasn't stopped right-wing publications like World Net Daily from blaming Obama for not standing up to the airline: "White House press secretary Jay Carney today closed down expectations that the president might address allegations of anti-Semitism by Delta Air Lines when he refused to allow the question to be asked."

Apparently, this prompted someone to send around an email entitled "Jew can't fly, but the rest of us can. White House refuses to weigh in." A line in the email proclaims, "Older people remember how Nazi Germany gradually started down the road to the Holocaust, one small step at a time. There are parallels to current events, strangely coincident with the advent of the Obama White House."

The email looked a lot like recent entries in right-wing Arizona blogs under the heading "Ben Franklin" of the "American Post-Gazette." Most of ol' Ben's blogs are directed against the recall of right-wing Arizona legislator Russel Pearce. This particular email, on an entirely different subject, doesn't appear to have been published on the Internet. Possibly whoever did write it wanted to add some right-wing bona fides by borrowing ol' Ben's masthead and signature.

These examples and others are part of a concerted effort by the right wing in this country to discredit our duly-elected President and place its own anti-government, uncompromisingly corporatist Tea Partiers into political power. These are the same undemocratic forces who want to bring down the United States government and create worldwide financial chaos by refusing to increase the debt ceiling.

American Jews must be ever vigilant against this type of vicious propaganda. Today it's directed at Jews, but it could just as easily be directed against Jews whenever it suits the propagandists' purposes.