The Party of Anti-Semitism

I could have selected a more provocative title, but you can use your imaginations.

Close on the heels of blasting Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel's equating the liberation of Iraq to the Holocaust, the Anti-Defamation League turned its righteous indignation upon the Dems' latest rhetorical terrorist, Senator Dick "Turban" Durbin:

Dear Senator Durbin:

We write to object to your reference to Nazis in the context of the debate on detainees at Guantanamo Bay on the Senate floor earlier this week.

Whatever your views on the treatment of detainees and alleged excesses at the Guantanamo Bay facility, it is inappropriate and insensitive to suggest that actions by American troops in any way resemble actions taken by Nazis in their treatment of prisoners. Suggesting some kind of equivalence between their interrogation tactics demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about the horrors that Hitler and his regime actually perpetrated.

We urge you to repudiate your remarks and apologize to the American people for distorting an important issue with an inappropriate comparison to Nazi tactics. However heated the debate over issues of the day, we would urge you to refrain from using Holocaust imagery in the future.

Sounds weak even for a gentle rebuke. But that's just my bias against futile admonitions talking.

Did lead me back a few days to an interesting column on the Democrats' growing resemblance to a French, if not German, level of anti-Semitism:

What's been almost-entirely overlooked in all this is the sinister stain of anti-Semitism that Durbin's outburst made manifest.

When Durbin was saying what happened to Gitmo detainees was like what happened to those 11 million Nazi victims – more than half of them Jews – he was also, by definition, saying what happened during the Holocaust was no worse than what happened at Gitmo.

It has long been a party line of Nazi apologists and history revisionists that what went on in those Nazi camps – the brutal torture, the slave labor, the gas ovens, the soap factories, the lamp-shade artifacts, the mass graves – either never took place, or has been almost-laughably over-exaggerated.

More than that, the legend of a mythical Holocaust has been the central lynchpin of post-World War II anti-Semitism. Jews and other survivors and families of survivors of the Holocaust have been having for more than half a century to fight off such lies and slander.

And now along comes a United States senator from, of all places, Abraham Lincoln's hometown, one Dick Durbin, trivializing all those monstrous horrors – and, when confronted with his mass slander, refusing even to apologize.

Apologize? Durbin is probably right. How could he possibly atone for such an outrage with a mere apology?....

This was the worst sort of anti-Semitism. Lacking the candor of an outright anti-Semitic slanderer, slithered around and used the rhetorical device of invidious comparison.

This has long been a part - alas, a growing part - of European culture, especially in France, where anti-Semitism thrives. Of late, it has gained ground in the United States.

The most recent sneaky verson of anti-Semitism is the nudge-nudge, wink-wink vendetta against foreign policy "neoconservatives" in the Bush Administration who favor the survival of Israel over Palestinian terrorism.

The Durbin ploy is cast from the same sick mold.

Whoa. This is, as Doc Brown once put it in Back to the Future, "some serious [bleep]." Also highly atavistically satisfying [bleep]. Seems the more we dig into Durbin's slander, the bigger the stench of the psychological onion we're unearthing grows.

The columnist, John L. Perry, isn't finished asking tough questions:

Where are Democratic leaders? How dare they let Durbin get away with this?

Especially, where are Jewish members of the Senate who are Democrats? Where is Joe Lieberman of Connecticut? Chuck Schumer of New York? Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California? Carl Levin of Michigan? Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey? Ron Wyden of Oregon? Russ Feingold and Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin? Afraid to be caught defending the memory and honor of the Holocaust victims? Somehow embarrassed to speak up in public against Durbin, lest it may advantage the Bush Administration or associate them in constituents' minds with the painful past?

That's nothing to the embarrassment, the pain they will endure if they don't speak up.

Perry's prescription is even tougher:

[Durbin's] only decent, appropriate action would be prompt resignation from the Senate. Better still, his impeachment and removal. Don't forget, the Senate has the constitutional power to remove a senator from its membership.

Mr. Perry, BTW, has been a registered Democrat for over fifty years. And, to give credit where it is due, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is another Donk with a conscience and the courage to obey it.

Given that the Democrats are already openly bigoted against evangelical Christians, adding a burgeoning contempt for the "Judeo" prefix would close that ecumenical circle, wouldn't it? And what other philosophical conclusion can be drawn from the arguments of a political party that, taken to their logical terminus, would hand victory to Islamofascists who seek the subjugation and genocide of both Jews and Christians?

Who knows whether Republicans will ever muster the testicular fortitude to teach Turban Durbin a lesson, but the conduct of the latter is certainly proving to be...educational...of the inner workings of the collective Donk consciousness.

Further this deponent sayeth not, except that next time you tune in C-SPAN II and see Senator Durbin on his feet, be sure to check the stiffness of his gait.

UPDATE: Richard Baehr of the Ameican Thinker concurs....