Melanie Phillips: Sanitizing Soros through guilt by association
The law professor Alan Dershowitz has thrown a legal hand-grenade into America's political civil war by claiming to have evidence that former President Barack Obama "personally asked" the FBI to investigate someone "on behalf" of Obama's "close ally," billionaire financier George Soros.
He made his cryptic remark in an interview defending US President Donald Trump against claims he interfered in the prosecution of his former adviser, Roger Stone.
Dershowitz, a confirmed liberal, drew the ire of the left by joining Trump's impeachment defense team – not because he's a Trump fan, but because he cares about upholding the rule of law and the US constitution, which he believes (with good evidence) are being trashed in the anti-Trump witch-hunt.
Now, though, Dershowitz has crossed yet another line. For to criticize Soros, the principal funder of treasured activist causes, means automatically turning into a bogeyman of the left.
Predictably, therefore, Dershowitz has been painted as a wild conspiracy theorist. Other critics of Soros, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, find themselves labeled anti-Semites.
J’Accuse! Our Dreyfus and Theirs
Two months after its shellacking in the United Kingdom’s general elections, the Labour Party continues to remind British voters of why they chose the “anyone-but-Jeremy-Corbyn” option.U.S. Criticizes French Failure to Try Jewish Woman's Killer
Last week, it was the turn of John McDonnell — Corbyn’s main lieutenant and a stalwart of the party’s far-left — to plumb the depths of illogical, offensive, and plain ignorant political rhetoric. Speaking immediately after a visit to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in the grim surroundings of south London’s Belmarsh prison, McDonnell produced an unforgettable soundbite. Just not in the way he intended.
“I think this is one of the most important and significant political trials of this generation, in fact longer,” said McDonnell, referring to the possibility that Assange will be extradited to the United States to face 18 charges related to national security violations, of which 17 are covered by the Espionage Act.
Warming to his subject, McDonnell then ventured, “I think it’s the Dreyfus case of our age.”
Perhaps McDonnell believed that this comparison would send journalists scurrying onto Google for a quick refresher course on “Dreyfus,” and that he would consequently be congratulated for having offered such a thoughtful, historically resonant observation. No such luck.
Diligently performing their duties as representatives of the Jewish community, organizations including the Community Security Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust swiftly countered McDonnell’s claim. Whatever Assange might be, they said, he is no Dreyfus.
This, by the way, is not a slight towards Assange. Even if you temporarily forget McDonnell’s breathtaking gall in appropriating one of the seminal episodes of modern antisemitism to make his point that Assange is facing a show trial, on a purely empirical level, the comparison with Dreyfus is hopeless.
The U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism implicitly criticized the decision in France not to try a man who killed his Jewish neighbor.
Elan Carr referenced the decision on the killer of Sarah Halimi during a conference Monday on anti-Semitism organized by the European Jewish Association in Paris.
In December, a judge decided not to try Kobili Traore of killing Halimi in 2017 while shouting about Allah. The judge cited psychiatric evaluations saying Traore’s consumption of marijuana before the incident led to a “delirious episode” that made him not legally responsible for his actions. But the judge also said that Traore, who is in his 30s, killed Halimi because he is an anti-Semite.
The ruling provoked outrage by French Jews. Last month, President Emmanuel Macron said that “there is a need for a trial” for Traore.
“You don’t dismiss hate crime charges for issues like the consumption of marijuana,” Carr said, referencing his credentials as a former prosecutor in Los Angeles. “It doesn’t explain away hate crimes that need to be prosecuted to the utmost severity of the law.”
The conference, titled “Jews in Europe: United for a Better Future,” was held at the European Center for Judaism, a $17 million community center opened in October.
Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association, said the building and growing engagement with Judaism by many European Jews is making him “hopeful of the future of Jews here” despite the challenges.