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October 1, 1999/21 Tishri 5760, Vol. 52, No.5
Silence of pundits deafening despite Buchanan's paper trail
JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Jewish Exponent
Nearly 10 years ago, a nationally syndicated political columnist wrote a memorable article. The piece clearly laid out the reasons for his hostility to American Jews and Israel, and why he didn't care about the criticism his words would generate.
The author was Patrick J. Buchanan, the man who may well be the Reform Party's nominee for president of the United States next year. Whether he pulls that coup off or not, Buchanan is still the most prominent anti-Semite in American politics of the last 60 years.
Published in the New York Post on Sept. 19, 1990, the article was only the most blatant instance of Buchanan's contempt for Israel and Jews in general. It's worth recalling that specific piece, because it is not merely part of the paper trail of a pugnacious wordsmith. The column is prima facie evidence of open hostility to Jews.
A few examples from that column will suffice to explain the point.
While decrying anti-Semitism, Buchanan accused Israel and its "amen corner" of fomenting war in the Persian Gulf, in which non-Jewish American boys would die to serve the Jewish state's purposes. He cited a cabal of the Anti-Defamation League and New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal as having contracted "a hit" on him for exposing the plot. Then, he went on to accuse Israel of plotting to steal the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
What else was on his mind? In a flight of fantasy, Buchanan then cited an anonymous report that Israel's Mossad had conspired to allow Islamic fundamentalist terrorists to murder 242 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1982.
Reform is the creature of Ross Perot's independent candidacy for president in 1992 and 1996. Whoever becomes its standard-bearer will likely be on the ballot in all 50 states next November and have millions of federal campaign-finance dollars to spend.
The Reform nomination may earn its candidate a place in the presidential debates, as well as a serious hearing throughout the campaign. All of which means that the possibility of Buchanan gaining that honor is no small matter for American Jews.
The fact is, the Reform Party is a much better fit for Buchanan than the Republican Party. Buchanan is not even really a conservative, unless you think the only way to define that term is a candidate's stand on abortion or a know-nothing attitude toward immigrants.
Buchanan is, instead, a throwback to the agrarian Populist movement of the 1890s: isolationist, anti-immigrant and hostile to Jews. And his class-warfare attacks on free trade put him outside the free market and libertarian ideals that have defined most modern American conservative thinking. He is much more in the tradition of those hayseed socialists than that of his one-time boss, Ronald Reagan.
As for Buchanan's most recent book, "A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny," give Buchanan credit. Rather than publishing a puff piece designed to help his campaign, he has actually given us nearly 400 pages of what he really thinks.
He devotes considerable space to decrying American participation in World War II (he thinks we would have been better off letting the Nazis and the Soviets slug it out on their own) and defending the "America First" movement, which opposed Franklin Roosevelt's tilt toward the Allies before Pearl Harbor.
He opposes almost all humanitarian interventions abroad by the United States and decries Jewish influence on American foreign policy. (He blames us for the Persian Gulf War, which he continues to oppose.) Buchanan's idea of a settlement of the conflict in the Middle East includes a "Vatican enclave-capital in Arab East Jerusalem."
But why, in spite of this paper trail of bizarre beliefs, has Buchanan maintained his standing as a mainstream commentator and welcome guest - and host - on television news talk shows all these years? One would have thought that anyone perverse enough to flirt with Holocaust denial would not be able to make a prosperous living blabbing on television. Instead, his calumnies have been indulged and excused by his fellow talk-show stars of both the left and the right.
When A.M. Rosenthal denounced Buchanan as an anti-Semite in 1990, he was virtually alone among commentators. Most preferred to put the dispute down to just an "honest disagreement."
The Times' William Safire, who blasted Buchanan as a purveyor of anti-Semitism in his Sept. 16 column, was again virtually alone in taking such a stand. The reaction from other pundits - liberals and conservatives - was that Safire was escalating a policy dispute into a personal attack.
As we monitor Buchanan's candidacy in the coming year, it will be incumbent on Jews and non-Jews who oppose his bigotry not to let the media get away with excusing or ignoring Buchanan's loony beliefs. It is long past time for journalists - especially the punditocracy that reigns on the networks - to stop giving their friend Pat the kid-gloves treatment.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
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