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Podhoretz Defends Limbaugh from ADL Accusation

It’s an anti-Semitism round robin!

by
Marc Tracy
January 25, 2010
Norman Podhoretz.(Hudson Institute)
Norman Podhoretz.(Hudson Institute)

Rush Limbaugh has enlisted an ally from within the shtetl. Last week, Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, accused Limbaugh of “borderline anti-Semitic” comments after the conservative talk-radio mega-star said (without, er, any basis in fact) that President Obama’s fulminations against Wall Street smacked of the whole bankers-as-Jews stereotype. Now, to Limbaugh’s defense comes Norman Podhoretz, the legendary neoconservative. Podhoretz argues:

Foxman has a long history of seeing an anti-Semite under every conservative bed while blinding himself to the blatant fact that anti-Semitism has largely been banished from the Right in the past forty years, and that it has found a hospitable new home on the Left, especially where Israel is concerned. … Now Foxman has the chutzpah to denounce Rush Limbaugh as an anti-Semite and to demand an apology from him to boot. Well, if an apology is owed here, it is the national director of the Anti-Defamation League who should apologize for the defamatory accusation of anti-Semitism that he himself has hurled against so loyal a friend of Israel as Rush Limbaugh.

So, to recap:

Limbaugh to Obama: You’re an anti-Semite!

Foxman to Limbaugh: No, you’re the anti-Semite!

Podhoretz to Foxman: No, the anti-Semites are on the left! Besides, Limbaugh likes Israel, which means he cannot possibly be an anti-Semite!

This has been productive!

Related: Why Are Jews Liberals? A Symposium [Tablet Magazine]

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.