ZOA
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed its concern over the strong criticism that a number of American Jewish leaders and other prominent Jews in recent days have directed at Fox broadcaster, Glenn Beck, for his criticism of Israel/U.S.-basher, financier George Soros, regarding his behavior in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944. In that year, George Soros’ father obtained forged papers and bribed a government official to save his son, George, then 14 years old, by taking him in as his alleged godson under a falsified Christian identity. In this capacity, George Soros accompanied his fake godfather on his appointed rounds as a government official, confiscating property from Jews who were to be deported to their deaths in Auschwitz. George Soros later said that he felt no guilt, remorse or difficulty whatsoever for being in this situation. In fact, he wrote in a forward to his father’s book, “these ten months [of the Nazi occupation] were the happiest times of my life ... We led an adventurous life and we had fun together.”
Regarding this circumstance, Mr. Beck said that Soros “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps. I am certainly not saying George Soros enjoyed that, even had a choice -- I mean, he’s 14 years old. He was surviving. So I’m not making a judgment, that’s between him and G-d.”
A number of American Jewish leaders condemned Mr. Beck for these remarks, yet a 1998 interview with Soros conducted by Steve Kroft on ‘60 Minutes’ shows that Beck did not misstate the facts:
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes. [Ed. note: Right here, George Soros acknowledges the accuracy of Beck’s statement]
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that’s–that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not–not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t–you don’t see the connection. But it was–it created no–no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, ‘I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.’ None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c–I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was–well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets–that if I weren’t there–of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would–would–would be taking it away anyhow” (‘Interview with Steve Kroft,’ ‘60 Minutes,’ December 20, 1998).
The following is a sampling of anti-Israel, anti American statements by George Soros:
· In the introduction to his father’s Tivadar Soros’ book, Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-Occupied Hungary, which Soros himself wrote, Soros said of the months that he lived under Nazi occupation “these ten months [of the Nazi occupation in 1944] were the happiest times of my life ... We led an adventurous life and we had fun together.”
· “There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that … It’s not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I’m critical of those policies. If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish” (Uriel Heilman, ‘In rare Jewish appearance, Soros says Jews and Israel cause anti-Semitism (Bush policies too!),‘ JTA.org, November 7, 2003).
· “‘The true motives for the Bush administration’s determination to overthrow Saddam Hussein remain shrouded in mystery …Oil and Israel likely loomed large in the administration’s policy deliberations, but these were not the reasons publicly offered by Bush and his advisers for the invasion of Iraq’ … In his chapter ‘The Iraqi Quagmire,’ a section on ‘the motives’ describes Israel as an ‘important consideration’” (Ira Stoll, “Soros Says Israel Was Likely Motive For War,” The New York Sun, December 4, 2003).
· “‘He [Soros] also says that the Nazis, Israel, Arab terrorists, and America after September 11 are all cases of ‘victims turning perpetrators’… He writes that, ‘Under the Bush administration, the United States has also become a victim-turned-perpetrator, although the American public would be loath to recognize it’” (Ira Stoll, “Soros Says Israel Was Likely Motive For War,” New York Sun, December 4, 2003).
· “The Bush Administration is actively supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas” (George Soros, ‘On Israel, America and AIPAC,’ New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 6, April 12, 2007).
· I am not a Zionist” (George Soros, ‘On Israel, America and AIPAC,’ New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 6, April 12, 2007).
· “Then came the blunder I am talking about. Israel, with the strong backing of the United States, refused to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government… no progress is possible as long as the Bush administration and the Ehud Olmert government persist in their current position of refusing to recognize a unity government that includes Hamas…” (George Soros, ‘On Israel, America and AIPAC,’ New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 6, April 12, 2007).
· “I don’t think that you can ever overcome anti-Semitism if you behave as a tribe; the only way you can overcome it is if you give up the tribalness” (Connie Bruc, ‘The World According to Soros,’ New Yorker, January 23, 1995).
· “NEWSWEEK: You say that the main obstacle to a stable and just world is the United States. That’s a pretty strong statement.
George Soros: Yes, but it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world … By declaring a ‘war on terror’ after September the 11th, we set the wrong agenda for the world” (‘America the Dangerous?, ‘Interview with George Soros, Newsweek, June 28, 2006).
* “More recently, since September 11, Mr. Soros has made it his goal to burst what he has called ‘the bubble of American supremacy.’ He has said that having helped to liberate Communist countries, he now views America as the gravest threat to world freedom” (Editorial, “Who Is George Soros?” Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2003).
* The Abu Ghraib affair was a “moment of truth” for the U.S. that “hit us the same way as the [September 11, 2001] terrorist attack itself” (Peter Wallsten, ‘Distaste for Bush Spurs Liberals to Push for Kerry,’ Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2004).
· “‘When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,” it reminds me of the Germans.’ It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit (‘the enemy is listening’). ‘My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me” (Laura Blumenfeld, ‘Soros’ Deep Pockets Vs. Bush,’ Washington Post, September 11, 2003).
· “The crisis now, the one that I’m predicting, the crisis of global capitalism, latest version, is a political and military crisis,” an agitated Soros told me. “It has been brought about by the exploitation of Sept. 11 by the Bush administration to pursue its policy of dominating the world in the guise of fighting terrorism” (Mark Gimein, ‘George Soros Is Mad as Hell,’ Fortune, October 27, 2003).
· “The Bush dream of American supremacy is both unattainable and in contradiction with the principles that America has traditionally stood for. It endangers our values as well as our security” (George Soros, ‘The Bubble of American Supremacy: the cost of Bush’s War in Iraq,’ 2004).
In addition:
· Soros has also been a massive contributor to Human Rights Watch, to which he pledged $100 million last month and which international law authority Professor Anne Bayefsky has described thus, “Human Rights Watch defended the U.N.’s ‘anti-racism’ Durban Declaration despite its blatant discrimination against Israel and cast its lot with those who have painted the defenders of Jewish self-determination as racists. HRW supported the U.N.’s Goldstone report, a modern-day blood libel that claims Israel ‘deliberately’ aimed to murder Palestinian civilians under the guise of defending its own people against Hamas terror. HRW championed the U.N. Human Rights Council and strongly advocated U.S. membership, in the full knowledge that the council has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all the other 191 U.N. member states combined. Last year, representatives of Human Rights Watch unashamedly traveled to one of the world’s worst human-rights abusers, Saudi Arabia, to raise money by casting the organization as an antidote to what they labeled ‘pro-Israel pressure groups.’ Since HRW had, as [HRW founder Robert] Bernstein put it, itself produced ‘far more condemnations of Israel . . . than of any other country in the region,’ he rightly concluded that it had turned its back on its founding mission and significantly diminished its moral force” (Anne Bayefsky, ‘Soros’ Anti-Human Rights Agenda,’ National Review Online, September 20, 2010).
· Soros is a major funder of J Street, an anti-Israel group which supported the Goldstone Report and came out against sanctions against Iran. Leaders of J Street understood just how anti-Israel was the reputation of George Soros that they denied that Soros was a contributor. Only last month did this fact come to light.
* Syndicated columnist and broadcaster Dennis Prager has written, “What do Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Noam Chomsky and George Soros have in common? They were/are all radicals, born to Jewish parents, had no Jewish identity and hurt Jews (not to mention non-Jews)” (Dennis Prager, ‘George Soros and the Problem of the Radical Non-Jewish Jew,’ Dennisprager.com. February 27, 2007).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “It is painful, troubling and disquieting to see Jewish leaders defending any actions by George Soros, someone who has shown himself to be an active antagonist of Israel and the U.S., whom he blames for the world’s troubles. But, unfortunately, this is nothing new or unusual. It is painful to see Jewish leaders time and again defend virulent critics of Israel – not only George Soros, but figures like Yasser Arafat, of whom one Jewish leader said when Arafat received the Nobel Peace prize that he ‘deserved it and earned it’ and even that Arafat’s use of the term ‘jihad’ merely meant ‘jihad for peace.’
“Or anti-Israel figures like Desmond Tutu (whose vicious statements about Israel the ZOA has previously listed), whom one Jewish leader defended when Tutu was disinvited from speaking at a Minnesota university on account of his record of virulent anti-Israel words and actions, thereby regaining a speaking platform for Tutu. After ZOA exposed Tutu’s vicious hostility towards Israel, students at the campus went to work and were able to get the invitation rescinded. At that point, a Jewish leader called the president of the university as well as publicly proclaiming that Tutu was merely a ‘harsh critic of Israel, not an anti-Semite’ and therefore should be allowed to speak.
“Then there is also the case of Professor John Roth, who was appointed to direct studies at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, but who had equated some Israeli policies with Nazi policies) and had also urged Israel to stop aliyah on the grounds that it provokes Arabs, but who was defended by many Jewish leaders, rabbis and academics when his hostile record was exposed by ZOA (and which finally led to Roth’s resignation).
“And at the drop of a hat, when the perennial Israel-basher Jimmy Carter made a statement that they misconstrued being an apology, several Jewish leaders immediately made statements like this is ‘the beginning of reconciliation,’ ‘we must look at it seriously,’ and ‘Carter should be congratulated an encouraged.’
“It is also readily apparent that George Soros shows a callous, indeed, chilling lack of human empathy for the unspeakable fate of his Jewish brethren in Hungary which he witnessed first-hand. This is noteworthy, because this lack of empathy is also remarkably rare among those who witnessed the Holocaust but were lucky enough to have survived it.
“I, myself, am the son of Holocaust survivors who met in a German Displaced Persons camp, where I was born. I know from personal knowledge that my father, whose parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and all eight siblings were murdered by the Nazis, felt constant pangs of guilt about having survived while his family, friends, Jewish neighbors and Jewish brethren were murdered by the millions. Obviously, he bore no moral responsibility at all but, like other survivors, could not escape feelings of guilt, for being the sole survivor, which haunted and plagued my father to end of his life. As attested to many times by clinicians who have studied Holocaust survivors, it is a normal, understandable reaction of those in such situations. It is deeply chilling that Mr. Soros never felt any grief, horror, or guilt over the loss of so much of his Jewish brethren and comfortably proclaims such.
“In light of Soros’ hatred of Israel and the United States; his continuous efforts to harm them; the absence of any subsequent remorse and feeling as an adult over the events he witnesses in Nazi-occupied Hungary as a 14-year old; as well as the fact that Glenn Beck’s comments were essentially accurate, George Soros merits no defense or sympathy from Jewish leaders. We are truly puzzled that some Jewish leaders have chosen to defend this and other Israel-bashers from their critics.”
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