Journalist Michael Kinsley famously defined a gaffe as the moment "when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say."  The same holds true for two important Democrat party media outlets: the New York Times and the Boston Globe.  Both displayed their hatred for Jews, a feeling that has nothing to do with disagreeing with Israel's politics and everything to do with a deep loathing for the world's only Jewish state.

Last week, the Boston Globe's opinion section ran a cartoon, which it reproduced in a tweet, that straight-out accused Israel of committing actual and cultural genocide against the Arabs in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel.

In addition to being a vicious lie about the only nation in the world that tries to conduct a moral war that spares civilians, the cartoon is inaccurate.  While Jews have continuously occupied the same land — and worshiped the same God — for 4,000 years, the Arabs, having copied much of the Jewish faith, began to build over it more than 2,000 years after the Jews first arrived.  Moreover, almost all of the Arabs currently in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are new arrivals who drifted into an Ottoman-Syrian backwater between 190 and 90 years ago.

Charles Lipson vigorously and accurately attacks the cartoon for being "exactly what modern, intellectual anti-Semitism looks like.  The idea is to link the Jewish state to deliberate, willful killing of innocents, to inhumanity and brutal militarism."  He has a lot more to say — all of it astute and important — so I recommend reading his entire essay.

Then, on Tuesday, Michelle Goldberg authored a New York Times opinion piece about anti-Semitism in America.  In it, she tries desperately to say the Democrat party doesn't really have a problem with anti-Semitism.  Instead, her grievance is that, whenever that teeny little handful of mean people say things that can be taken the wrong way, conservatives pounce, pointing out that the Democrat party has an anti-Semitism problem.

Having read Goldberg's essay, one of the editors responsible for putting titles on these pieces came up with a perfect and honest one: "Attacks on Jews over Israel Are a Gift to the Right."  In other words, anti-Semitism as a standalone issue isn't a problem; it's a problem only when it makes Democrats look bad.

The pushback was so instantaneous that the paper quickly retitled the piece: "The Crisis of Anti-Semitic Violence."

Heck of a headline update by The New York Times.

Of course there is no explanation. pic.twitter.com/eSF5YP9haL

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 25, 2021

Both the New York Times and the Boston Globe are bastions of leftism.  They serve as thought leaders and propaganda outlets for the Democrat party.  Much as Michelle Goldberg would like to clean up the Democrat party's growing reputation for anti-Semitism, the reality is that the reputation is deserved.

Leftists despise Israel.  They despise it because it is a staunch American ally.

They despise it because, beginning with Marx, leftists associate Jews with capital. So, even though the American left is hugely wealthy because of capitalism and Israel started out as a socialist country, that hatred remains embedded in leftism.

They despise it because, as Matti Friedman wrote, despite Israel having more black citizens than the surrounding Arab communities, and even though Israelis tend to be dark-skinned people who were evicted from those same Arab communities, leftists impose their whole imperialist theory — evil white Israelis against poor brown Arabs — onto the region.

They despise it because, beginning with the 1967 War, there was a switch between Russia, which had once supported Israel because it was socialist, and America, which had been hostile to it because the State Department was notoriously anti-Semitic.  Israel became an American ally while worldwide communism supported the Arabs.  America's Democrat party, in its hard-left incarnation, follows the communist model.

And, I think, they despise it because Israel is a moral country, one that tries desperately to fight a war without killing innocents.  It is an island of tolerance in a vast sea of hatred.  Leftists hate this morality because they understand that Israel's principles are rooted in religion.  The biblical grounding highlights the immorality that is the nihilistic, materialist leftist worldview.

In some ways, the Times and the Globe deserve our thanks for finally letting the mask drop and showing who they, and the Democrat party, really are.

Image: The New York Times building façade (cropped) by Frieder Blickle. CC BY-SA 4.0.

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