Soccer Dad

In all the wrong places

In Just an antisemitic laugh? Hardly, Charles Krauthammer takes issue with Baron Sasha Cohen's impetus for making his movie Borat.

Krauthammer reacted to a statement made by Cohen defending his movie

Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Borat, revealed his purpose for doing that in a rare out-of-character interview he granted Rolling Stone in part to counter charges that he was promoting anti-Semitism. On the face of it, this would be odd, given that Cohen is himself a Sabbath-observing Jew. His defense is that he is using Borat's anti-Semitism as a "tool" to expose it in others. And that his Arizona bar stunt revealed, if not anti-Semitism, then "indifference" to anti-Semitism. And that, he maintains, was the path to the Holocaust.

Krauthammer, though, writes that Cohen is looking for antisemitism in all the wrong places.

Baron Cohen could easily have found what he seeks closer to home. He is, after all, from Europe, where synagogues are torched and cemeteries desecrated in a revival of anti-Semitism -- not "indifference" to but active -- unseen since the Holocaust. Where a Jew is singled out for torture and death by French-African thugs. Where a leading Norwegian intellectual -- et tu, Norway? -- mocks "God's Chosen People" ("We laugh at this people's capriciousness and weep at its misdeeds") and calls for the destruction of Israel, the "state founded . . . on the ruins of an archaic national and warlike religion."

Krauthammer further observes

Yet, amid this gathering darkness, an alarming number of liberal Jews are seized with the notion that the real threat lurks deep in the hearts of American Protestants, most specifically Southern evangelicals. Some fear that their children are going to be converted; others, that below the surface lies a pogrom waiting to happen; still others, that the evangelicals will take power in Washington and enact their own sharia law.

This view is common among certain groups within the Jewish community. Consider an analysis written by James D. Besser from 2 years ago Should Jews oppose Evangelical help? Besser whose analyses are picked up by quite a few American-Jewish weeklies writes

The Jewish community is caught between Christians who love Israel, but maybe for the wrong reasons, and who vehemently oppose almost every domestic position of the Jewish majority, and Christians who continue to be important partners on the domestic front, while embracing a particularly virulent anti-Zionism.
...
Their support for Israel has been welcomed by single-issue pro-Israel groups, but its prophetic basis remains a source of deep concern for many Jews. Some are justifiably scared that these Christians might wield their considerable political influence to help advance apocalyptic beliefs that insist war is inevitable and peace efforts are a trick of the devil. That’s what Robertson seemed to suggest when he said that taking land from the Jews and giving it the Palestinians was “Satan’s plan.”
...
Some of the Jewish leaders who blithely overlook the prophetic foundation of evangelical love for Israel now demand an end to dialogue with the mainline Protestant groups that still want peace, not Armageddon, in the Middle East, however unbalanced their political attacks on Israel.

Besser's reports are a staple of American-Jewish newsweeklies. The problem is that he is an unabashed Democrat and completely in line with the thinking of peace now. I don't know how many people read him uncritically, but I have to think that his opinions (he rarely reports without a healthy dose of his own opinion included) resonate with a portion of Amreica's Jewish community.

David Brog who has written a book about evangelical support for and of Israel though, has a more benign view of that support.

Evangelicals who support Israel most certainly do want to convert people. Evangelicals who don’t support Israel also want to convert people. The mission of sharing the “good news” of Jesus Christ is central to being an evangelical. But it is important to note that this is not about converting just the Jews—Christians want to share their faith with Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and their Christian friends and neighbors who have yet to be born again.

The important question is this: Is evangelical support for Israel merely a tool in the effort to convert the Jews? Is this merely some scheme to soften the Jews up so that they can better sell Jesus to them? And the answer to this question is absolutely not.

If anything, the opposite it true. I and others who have worked with Christians in support of Israel all report that no one has ever tried to convert us. In fact, Christians who support Israel tend to know more Jews and to understand their sensitivities better than Christians who do not. Thus, they have learned that Jews find “Jesus talk” offensive, and they tend to leave it out of the dialogue.

Krauthammer concludes

It is very hard to be a Jew today, particularly in Baron Cohen's Europe, where Jew-baiting is once again becoming acceptable. But it is a sign of the disorientation of a distressed and confused people that we should find it so difficult to distinguish our friends from our enemies.

It would appear that Baron Sascha Cohen has adopted the alarmist view of evangelical (and general Christian) support of Israel and ignored the danger of the real antisemites and anti-Israel crowd.

It's a shame that at a time when Jews are more threatened in Europe than anytime in the past 60 years and that the threat to Israel from Iran is increasing that many Jews look to find fault in their allies rather than taking a cold hard look at their enemies.

UPDATE: Done with Mirrors brings a news story to support Krauthammer's argument and concludes

There is no question that racism and anti-semitism are alive and well in America (Michael Richards and Mel Gibson, anyone?), and there's no excusing that. But, as Krauthammer points out, let's not lose all sense of proportion about where the real threats to Jews--and other minorities, as well--lie.

Disturbingly Yellow - who comments below - takes issue with Krauthammer. Based on his knowledge of Baron Sascha Cohen's repertoire, he argues that Cohen's comment wasn't meant as narrowly as Krauthammer interpreted it.

Krauthammer is a great political thinker. And in today’s politics, much of the news he comments on is formed though the spectrum of nations and separate societies and their relations to each other. Had Krauthammer gone in without the reflex of viewing matters through that busy lens and watched through a common human perspective, he may agree with Cohen’s defense: indifference to anti-Semitism was the path to the Holocaust. That doesn’t mean Cohen claims the American heartland is the “locus” of Jew hate. It doesn’t mean that Cohen is more alarmed by drunken ramblings of hoaxed American fraternity members than pro-Hezbollah parades in London. It means that the funny and passive types of ignorance found in the US humans against Jews, gays, foreigners humans are the path to not so funny and active types more prevalent in Europe the world.

Regarding Crablaw's comments, I haven't seen the movie either. (Nor do I have any desire to see it, especially after reading his synopsis.) But Krauthammer was commenting on Cohen's statement, about the importance of his movie.

Technorati tags: Borat, Israel, Antisemitism.