NJDC Slams Beck’s Comparison of Norway Victims to Hitler Youth

This is outrageous! Glenn Beck should be fired immediately and apologize for his horrible comments about this tragic event in Norway. He should be ashamed!

I had exactly the same thoughts regarding Glenn Beck’s remarks , which I expressed to the editor of the Forward this morning. (Not sure whether they will publish it.)

To: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Editor of the Forward:

In his article “Norway Massacre Shouldn’t be Used to Score Political Points,” Alex Stein either doesn’t know or chooses to ignore the pervasive idea expressed in Breivik’s Manifesto that considers liberal and left wing Jews as much of a target as the Norwegians at whom he shot. For example, Breivik specifically states, ““Jews that support multiculturalism today are as much of a threat to Israel and Zionism as they are to us. So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists.”

So why shouldn’t websites like Mondoweiss and Tikkun Olam, etc. take Breivik at his word that they are Breivik’s target and respond accordingly?

And why should Glenn Beck’s comparison of the young victims that Breivik shot with “Hitler youth,” escape criticism?  The Forward’s reproducing JTA’s bland and non-judgmental report of Beck’s question, “Who sends their kids to a political camp?”, without denouncing it, is appalling.

Particularly since the answer to Beck’s question is “American Jews”—including and particularly the most Zionistic of American Jews.

Besides the ZOA/Haddasah summer camps like the various Camp Judea sites around the country and the flagship Camp Tel Yehuda, both of which I myself attended as a teenager, there were (and in most cases still are) B’nei Akiva and other religious Zionist summer camps; the Conservative movement’s Camp Ramah; Reform movement summer camps;  Farband secular Yiddishist left wing summer camps; Beitar right wing summer camps. Cabins were named for Zionist heroes within the movement and in some cases there were (and still may be)  learning sessions about Jewish history and Zionism, according to a particular Zionist ideology. All of them instilled in their campers a passionate pro-Israel mindset through songs loosely based on biblical verses about love of “the land”’ and the importance of reclaiming it by making the desert bloom; “Israeli” dances, arts and crafts, sporting events like Maccabiah or Israel-oriented color wars; and theatrical performances. My sister came home from camp one summer (I can’t recall which one) and performed for us the theme song from that summer’s musical “Hans Yiddish Anderson”:

“Wonderful, wonderful land of promise, this is our homeland so dear.
For this land we love, we thank God above, for the voice of hope we hear.
Here is the home of Galil and Negev, Haifa’s right there on the sea.
We have sailed for days, Now we’re home to stay,
Singing “Land of Zion, land of promise, ‘Yisrael, you’re for me!”

Not enough to qualify as “political” (especially if being taught to children who are citizens of another country, namely the US)? I myself can recall a popular parody of West Side Story sung Camp Tel Yehuda in the 1960’s:  “Tonight, tonight , the Jews will all unite. Tonight there will be no Arab League.” We also had semi-formal lectures under the apple trees—for which we were equipped with black and white composition books—in which we were imbued with the history and ideology of Labor Zionism. I am sure that many other Forward readers attended Jewish summer camps with some degree of political orientation, slanted toward one ideloogy or another.

For Jewish media to let Beck’s question “Who sends their kids to a political camp?” pass without comment or condemnation is unpardonable.  Beck’s suggestion that children and teenagers who were sent by their parents to a “political” Labor party summer camp deserved to be massacred is nothing less than obscene, and should be vehemently denounced as such by the Forward,

People who attack GlennBeck and claim that the victims of the Norway mass murderer “deserved to be massacred” are bearing false witness.  Glenn said no such thing.  He merely expressed the question that many Americans had about the (for most americans) unusual idea of a summer camp for teens that is sponsored by a political party. 

I am 61 years old, and have lived in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Omaha, Washington State, Utah, Idaho and Colorado, as well as in Japan for five years, and have degrees in mathematics, law and enviornmental law, and I myself had NEVER heard of a political party sponsoring a youth movement, except for the Hitler Youth.  Even though my grandfather was the son of Swedish immigrants, and talked about his parents and tyheir lives in Sweden. I never heard him mention youth camps sponsored by political parties. 

I had always thought that activities for teens that were sponsored by the various Jewish Community Centers where I lived, such as in Marin County, California, were concerned with teaching teenagers about their Jewish heritage, or maybe even the religion of Judaism, not about a political agenda.  I had never seen or heard anything about the political emphasis of those camps until reading this blog.  I sincerely doubt that Beck or many Americans who are NOT Jewish know a lot about the political aspects of the curricula of those Jewish camps. 

I am also puzzled by the attacks on Beck for comparing certain people to the Nazis.  Many Democrats attacked George Bush by comparing him to Hitler and the Nazis; did you attack the critics of President Bush on that basis, or are you just a bunch of partisans who only criticize your political adversaries, and let your allies skate on the same behavior? 

Finally, I can understand you criticizing someone who makes light of the Holocaust, or claims it never happened.  The Japanese American community in the US is very conscious of the fact that the all-JA 442 Regimental Combat Team liberated one of the Nazi concentration camps.  There is pride in the JA community that a Japanese consular official in Lithuania saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis by giving them visas to travel to Japan.

But in this blog, you seem to be DEFENDING the Nazis!  You are criticizing Glenn Beck for saying things that use the Nazis as the standard of bad behavior.  You want to silence someone talking, not about the Jews who were the victims of the Nazis, but about the evil Nazis themselves!  While Jews were special victims of the Nazis, so were the people of Europe generally, from Britain to Russia, so no Jewish organization has a copyright on criticism of, or references to, the Nazis or Hitler. 

Your criticism of Beck has the form of the criticisms that certain radical Jihadists made against the Danish magazine that ran cartoons making fun of Mohammad.  Your statements are irrational, and you are reading intentions and thoughts into Beck’s remark that are purely the product of your fevered desire to label someone as an enemy of the Jews.  In that behavior, you are placing yourself in the same corner with Osama bin Laden and Islamic terrorists.

Glenn Beck is always seeking the limelight in racist and inflammatory issues.  It would be best to ignore him and without an audience, he would be talking to the wind.

Glen Becks Actual Comments http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/07/25/norway-tragedy-media-blames-u-s-conservatives/