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| George Soros (Wikipedia) |
That said, it cannot be denied that many of the policies executed during his Presidency were actually quite favorable to those of us that lean politically conservative and who support the state of Israel.
Point being that the truth must be told. Whether it be the good, the bad, or the ugly. (Which -in the case Trump - is all 3.) It is in that spirit of Emes that I am here to challenge a blurb I received in my daily briefing from the Forward which said the following:
And speaking of antisemitic tropes, former President Donald Trump accused George Soros, the Jewish billionaire and Holocaust survivor, of trying to “single-handedly buy” President Joe Biden a second term.
Antisemitic Trope? Is the Forward really accusing the former president of being an antisemite? Is it really antisemitic to say about wealthy Jewish philanthropist who donates a lot of money to a favored candidate that he is single handedly buying him a second term?
I am here to tell you that it is not. Unless you are so consumed by hatred of the former President that when he makes a comment like that about a Jew - it is automatically considered antisemitic.
I’ve heard that phrase used before about mega donors to political candidates who are not Jewish. No one accused them of being anti - whatever ethnicity their candidate was.
What does buying a high office mean anyway? Is it really so bad if one person spends lot of money on a campaign to the point of blowing his competition out of the water? If you’ve got the bucks and eared them honestly, I see no reason why it should be. Free country. The fact is that if anyone bought high political office it is the governor of my state, J. B. Pritzker – a billionaire who is Jewish. He financed his own campaign – well outspending the competition. He was criticized for that. (Wrongly, in my view.) But no one mentioned his religion.
What about the fact that Trump’s accusation was about a Holocaust survivor? Does that in and of itself make it antisemitic? Absolutely not.
This is not to say that one should not respect the fact that - like other survivors he suffered greatly and should be cut some slack. I think that's fair, Although I have been very critical of Satmar leadership, there is one thing the late Satmar Rebbe said that I completely agree with. Which is that all Holocaust survivors have experienced hell and therefore will go straight to Gan Eden upon their death. Regardless of whether they remained religious or not. George Soros in not religious, But he certainly suffered the ‘fires of hell’ during the Holocaust and will certainly inherit Gan Eden.
That does not mean I like his politics. I don’t. Fact is I can’t stand them. He is about as far left as you can go and still be called a Democrat. He supports every liberal cause imaginable – some of which are anti Torah. Hardly an exemplary Jew in that regard. For those of us that so radically disagree with him, we are entitled to criticize him. If he donates huge sums of money to a political candidate we don’t like, saying he is single handedly buying his opponent’s election is little more than an exaggerated, hyperbolic expression of reality. A reality that is unappreciated.
This is all Trump was doing. Which he had every right to do.
I am not happy defending the former president in any way. I don’t want my defense in this instance to be misconstrued as support. I am as opposed to his re-election as I ever was. But the distortion of truth by a major Jewish publication is, in my view, too important to ignore. If your going to bash a former president that actually deserves it, it must be done with the truth. Not with misrepresentations of it.
