Two stories in today’s news pointedly expressed a perverse paradox in the minds of Republicans: the Jews they embrace and the Jews they hate.
The first story, headlined in Haaretz, told of John Boehner’s reciprocal invitation from Bibi Netanyahu (PM in potentia) to visit Israel. The visit, which has yet to be officially announced in the US, was leaked to Haaretz by anonymous “senior Israeli officials”. They were no doubt acting on direct orders from Netanyahu who delights in yanking America’s chain whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Nor is Netanyahu wasting any time in flaunting his friendship with his American right wing confederates. Boehner with a delegation of Republican Congress members leave on March 31 and will spend their early-April recess as “honoured” guests of Israel.
In a sign of his apparent prescience, the visit was planned before the Israeli election and is viewed as part of Netanyahu’s “victory celebration”. While their itinerary will include the obligatory sight-seeing tours, there's surely no doubt that the main purpose of the trip will be to discuss Republicans’ future maneuvers with regards to disrupting the Iranian negotiations.
The timing of the trip dovetails conveniently with the scheduled Senate vote on the Corker-Menendez bill on April 14 which will seek a veto-proof majority to force President Obama to submit to Congress details of the Iranian negotiations. Both Senate and House Republicans are very confident that they have the bipartisan numbers to pull off a veto-proof majority in both chambers.
The second story appeared in the Huffington Post and is currently unfolding in Jefferson City, Missouri. It concerns the sad death of Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich who took his own life because he was the target of an anti-Semitic whispering campaign undertaken by Missouri GOP chairman, John Hancock.
Missouri has a very dark and recent history of anti-Semitism. In 1990, Henry Bloch – the H in H&R Block – had his nomination to the exclusive Kansas City Country Club withdrawn without explanation, even though he was sponsored by a potent trio of the city’s elite. The message was easy to decode: No Jews allowed.
Shortly thereafter, prominent golfer, Tom Watson, resigned from the same club. As he explained in an interview reported in the Chicago Tribune:
As a matter of conscience, I resigned... They put a prominent Jewish person up for membership and his application was withdrawn. It’s something I personally can’t live with because my family is Jewish.
Were club members more outraged by the naked anti-Semitism displayed by the club executive or the sudden loss of a world-class golfer, their most prominent member? Not unexpectedly, the timing of their outrage coincided with Watson's very public resignation and feeling was so strong in the clubhouse that Henry Bloch's nomination was reinstated and passed unanimously.
In April last year, USA Today reported the resignation of Marionville Mayor, Dan Clevenger. He resigned when city aldermen began impeachment proceedings after Clevenger made anti-semitic comments in the wake of the arrest of white supremacist Frazier Miller. At a public hearing, resident after resident decried him as a local and national embarrassment to the city.
Missouri's GOP chairman, John Hancock, hasn’t learned from history. He particularly failed to note the public backlash accompanying past occasions of rampant anti-Semitism. But even worse is that anti-Semitism could be so potent in this day and age as to hound a man to his death.
These two news stories – Boehner and co’s reciprocal visit to Israel and John Hancock’s lethal anti-Semitism – are the polar opposites of Semitic extremism. The contrast between the two could not be more stark yet both are present-day illustrations of the Republican mindset: traitorous on the one hand and racist on the other.
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