Inquirer Distorts Museum Dispute

By Michael Goldblatt

    Is it "fascist" to hold people accountable for their words and
ideas? Jane Eisner, of the Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial staff,
apparently thinks so. In a June 21 op-ed, Eisner used the "fascist"
epithet to defame those who have opposed the choice of Prof. John Roth for
director of Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum.
 
    Opponents of Roth have good reason for their concern. Roth has
publicly compared Israel to the Nazis, the rise of Ronald Reagan to the
rise of Hitler, and the American poor and the Palestinian Arabs to the Jews
in Nazi Germany; he has also equated PLO terrorism with Israeli
self-defense. That's quite a record for someone who is slated to become
director of Holocaust studies at the most important Holocaust-related
institution in the United States.
 
    Jane Eisner of the Inquirer defended Roth by making the incredible
claim that Roth never really wrote or said the things he wrote and said.
Eisner did not cite any of Roth's actual statements. She did not try to
show how his words were supposedly misunderstood or misinterpreted. She
simply claimed "he didn't do it," and she expected Inquirer readers to take
her word for it. It was journalistic irresponsibility at its most
egregious.
 
    Here's Eisner on Roth's 1988 article comparing Israel and Nazi
Germany: "[The critics] contend that Roth compare Israel and Nazi Germany.
Not so." The column was merely "clumsily written," Eisner insisted, without offering a single acutal quote from the article. If she had quoted Roth's own words, readers would have seen immediately that Roth did indeed compare the two.
Roth wrote that Kristallnacht , the 1938 Nazi government pogrom in which
100 Jews were murdered, 30,000 put in detention camps, and 1,000 Jewish
stores and synagogues were destroyed, "should provoke reflection 50 years
later. For early November, 1988, has its portents, too. Some of them can
be seen in Israel's election returns..." Roth added: "Kristallnacht
happened because a political state decided to be rid of people unwanted
within its borders. It seems increasingly clear that Israel would prefer
to rid itself of Palestinians if it could do so." Roth also wrote that the
Palestinian Arabs "are being forced into a tragic part too much like the
one played by the European Jews 50 years ago."
 
    Here's Eisner on Roth's statement equating poor Americans with the
Jews in Nazi Germany: "[The critics] claim Roth equated poor Americans and
Jews in Nai Germany. No intelligent reading of the eight-paragraph item
could lead to that conclusion." Not only did Eisner fail to quote what
Roth actually said, she even insulted her readers in advance, by suggesting
they are not intelligent if they disagree with her position. Roth did
indeed make the comparison. In USA Today on October 11, 1988, Prof. Roth
charged that "presidential candidates have little room in their rhetoric to
address the problems of the poor," and then added, USA Today reported: "In
Nazi Germany, he says, educated professionals allowed themselves to ignore
what was happening to the Jews."
 
    Eisner was even more misleading when it came to Roth's 1983
comparison of Israel and the PLO, and his 1980 comparison of the rise of
Ronald Reagan to the rise of Hitler. Here's how Eisner put it: "They'll
cite a Claremont College journal article from 1983. And one from 1980.
It's the same pattern: A scholar's writings are picked apart, lifted out of
context..." Really? How? Why not quote Roth's actual words so that
Inquirer readers can judge for themselves? Perhaps because Roth's actual
words are so damning. Here's they are: In 1980, Roth wrote that in the
wake of Reagan's election, "I could not help remembering how forty years ago
economic turmoil had conspired with Nazi nationalism and militarism--all
intensified by Germany's defeat in World War I--to send the world reeling
into catastrophe...It is not entirely mistaken to contemplate our
post-election state with fear and trembling. Economic upheavals, following
in the wake of a war lost in Vietnam, are spawning American nationalism and
militarism --and some other things, too--that may well unleash destruction
of their own."
 
    In the 1983 article, Roth explicitly equated PLO terrorism and
Israeli self-defense against terrorists in Lebanon, saying both were acts
of "evil for the sake of good." He also blamed Israel, in part, for Arabs'
hatred of it; blamed Israel for Egypt's refusal to normalize relations; and
implied that Israel's policies were based on Holocaust memories, not
legitimate security concerns.
 
    In her article, Eisner mentioned that the ZOA and U.S. Congressmen Michael
Forbes and Jon Fox have opposed the Roth appointment. Eisner also
acknowledged that John Podhoretz, the editorial page editor of the New York
Post , opposes Roth, but she instead of confronting Podhoretz's arguments,
Eisner tried to discredit Podhoretz by asserting that he "admitted he'd
never actually been inside the museum, even though he lived and worked near
it for many years" (Eisner added the emphasis). What Eisner didn't explain
was Podhoretz's reason for not visiting the museum: "My fear was that
people would experience the museum as a respectable version of a Halloween
spookhouse, a real-life horror show whose focus on death was ghoulishly
thrilling...The Holocaust was not a theatrical tragedy staged for the
enjoyment and edification of [museum-goers]." One can disagree with
Podhoretz's perspective, but it is wrong of Eisner to mock him or imply
that he did not care enough about the Holocaust to visit the museum. And
it is especially wrong for Eisner to suggest that Podhoretz's reluctance to
visit the museum somehow discredits his oppositon to John Roth. One need
not ever step foot in a Holocaust museum to know that someone who compares
Israel to the Nazis should not be a senior official of such a museum.
 
    Eisner also failed to acknowledge that there is a long and growing list of
additional opponents, including Neal Sher, former head of the Justice
Department unit which tracks Nazi war criminals and former executive
director of AIPAC; Dalck Feith, a founder of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum and a member of its board for 10 years; Sam Bloch and James Rapp,
officers of the American Gathering/Federation of Jewish Holocaust
Survivors; nationally syndicated columnist and television commentator
George Will; syndicated New York Daily News columnist Sidney Zion; the
national Jewish weekly Forward; and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir.
 
    But perhaps it is no surprise that Eisner didn't mention them. To
mention them would have been fair and reasonable--and the whole purpose of
Eisner's article was to unfairly, and unreasonably, defame the opponents of
John Roth.