John R. Cohn: Blaming The Jews

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MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has taken heat because of charges of bias in his election coverage. Last February he told viewers, “I felt this thrill going up my leg,” when he heard Barack Obama speak. Following the national party conventions, MSNBC replaced Mr. Matthews as its election night anchor.

Mr. Matthews was demoted over concerns about the appearance of bias and its effect on MSNBC’s reputation as a news outlet.

It is relatively easy to discount a journalist as being in a candidate’s camp. Mr. Matthews is not alone in that regard.

But earlier this summer, and largely unnoticed, Mr. Matthews took his devotion to Barack Obama in a potentially more dangerous direction, asking on his Sunday morning news show, “Could Jewish voters be what stands between Barack Obama and the White House?”

Mr. Matthews introduced the discussion with a video clip by comedian Jon Stewart of elderly Miami Jews discussing the Democrats’ candidate.

Mr. Stewart, of course is a comedian. Mr. Matthews considers himself a serious journalist.

Mr. Stewart’s correspondent introduced the segment, saying, “I was sent down to talk about this election and what we can do to bridge the gap between Jews and blacks…”

An elderly Jewish Floridian bluntly observes, “A lot of Jewish white people here will not vote for a black man.”

According to Mr. Matthews, recent polling data showed, “Only 60 percent of Jewish voters backed Obama,” That compared with 75 percent who backed John Kerry in 2004 and 79 percent who supported former Vice-President Al Gore in 2000 when he ran with Sen. Joe Lieberman. Sen. Lieberman was, of course, the first Jewish American on a major party national ticket. He is very publicly supporting John McCain this year.

In 2004, John Kerry was running against George Bush. Neither Mr. Bush nor Sen. Obama have the record of service to America of Sen. McCain or Sen. Kerry.

There are good reasons for Americans to carefully consider both candidates this year. That is the democratic process. But votes are not a politician’s entitlement. They are supposed to be earned. Mr. Matthews and his panel should know that.

Sixty-percent support among Jews is a far higher level than Sen. Obama has among other large, white, demographic groups. If all the Jews stayed home, Sen. Obama would be in worse shape. And if every American voted as the Jews did, he would win in a landslide.

Mr. Matthews suggested reduced Jewish support reflected racism, ignorance, concerns about his Muslim background, or even his middle name.

“We asked the Matthews Meter, 12 of our regulars, will Obama get as much of the Jewish vote as Kerry did? Seven say no, Obama will fall short of the Kerry level; five say he’ll eventually get there,” Mr. Matthews observed.

“I don’t know how he got to you two guys,” Mr. Matthews went on in addressing two apparently Jewish members of his journalist panel, “But anyway let me ask you this question. I was thinking, is it his name, Hussein? Is it the fact that he was raised – he had an Islamic father? Is it because he was raised in Indonesia? Is it because he’s black? What combination of these things is causing trouble?”

None of Mr. Matthews’ panel could articulate a legitimate reason for Jews not to more overwhelmingly support Obama.

Time magazine’s Joe Klein volunteered, “The fact is that there is a growing number of Jewish Americans who are buying into Republican arguments, especially neoconservative arguments, for the sake of Israel because the, you know, neoconservatives are very strong on attacking Iran and there are a lot of Jews who see Israel’s existence threatened by Iran.”

That struck a chord, as Elisabeth Bumiller, of The New York Times, chimed in, “So the question is, is he going to be with us when Israel does something that’s not popular around the world, will he stand with us, like America has in the past?”

Mr. Klein suggested that Jews are “hardwired” with a sense of irony after 4000 years of oppression. Ms. Bumiller volunteered that she knew “a number of extremely sophisticated Jewish voters… who think that Barack Obama is a Muslim or was a Muslim at one point”.

Most American Jews love this country and admire those who have served to defend it and them. They also think when Iran and its proxies in Hezbollah and Hamas say they want to destroy Israel, they mean it.

What they are trying to decide is what Sen. Obama means when he says, “The world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” adding he would take “no options off the table.”

That is important not just for Israel but for the United States, too. Oceans no longer protect us from committed killers. Terrorists with nuclear devices threaten not just the Little Satan but the Great Satan, too. Jews know no nation is invulnerable. They have been there too many times.

Mr. Matthews’ and his panel’s implication that Jewish prejudice, or Jews putting Israel’s interests ahead of America’s, may prevent an Obama victory is not supported by even his own data. It could encourage anti-Semitism if Sen. Obama should lose.

It would be reason for Sen. Obama’s supporters to blame the Jews. “Blame the Jews” is, unfortunately, a not very original concept. That phrase is also hardwired into 4000 years of history. Unfortunately, it is all too often followed by bad things happening.

A transcript of the July 28, 2008 broadcast can be found at
www.thechrismatthewsshow.com/index.php

John Cohn is a physician and Professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and a member of the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

John R. Cohn: Blaming The Jews

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AUTHOR

John R. Cohn

John R. Cohn, Thomas Jefferson University, SPME Board of Directors

John R. Cohn, M.D., is a physician at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (TJUH), in Philadelphia, PA, where he is the chief of the adult allergy and immunology section and Professor of Medicine. He is the immediate past president of the medical staff at TJUH.

In his Israel advocacy work he is a prolific letter writer whose letters and columns have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Jerusalem Post, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Haaretz, the Jewish Exponent, Lancet (an international medical journal based in the UK), and others. He was CAMERA’s “Letter Writer of the year” in 2003. He maintains a large email distribution of the original essays which he authors on various Israel-related topics.

He has spoken for numerous Jewish organizations, including Hadassah, the Philadelphia Jewish Federation and to a student group at Oxford University (UK). He and his wife were honored by Israel Bonds.

He wrote the monograph: “Advocating for Israel: A Resource Guide” for the 2010 CAMERA conference. It is valuable resource for all interested in maximizing their effectiveness in correcting the endless errors of fact and omission in our mainstream media. One piece of very valuable advice that he offers to other letter writers is: “Journalists and media are not our enemies, even those we don't agree with". Particularly for those of us in the academic community he urges a respectful and educational approach to journalists who have taken a wayward course.

In addition to the SPME board, Dr. Cohn is a member of a variety of professional and Jewish organizations, including serving on the boards of Hillel of Greater Philadelphia, the CAMERA regional advisory board, and Allergists for Israel (American allergists helping the Israeli allergist community). In the past he served on the board of the Philadelphia ADL. He participated in the 2010 CAMERA conference (“War by Other Means,” Boston University) where he led a panel with students on “Getting the Message Out,” and a break-out session called “Getting Published in the Mainstream Media.”

He is married, has three children and one grandchild. He belongs to two synagogues--he says with a chuckle, "So I always have one not to go to". He has been to Israel many times, including as a visiting professor at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. His first trip was at age 10, when Jerusalem was still a divided city; and he remembers vividly standing before the Mandelbaum Gate, wondering why he could not go through it to the Old City on the other side.

He adroitly balances his wide-ranging volunteer activities on behalf of Israel with his broad and complex medical and teaching practice (including authoring numerous professional publications) while successfully maintaining good relations with a broad spectrum of Jewish community leaders and organizations -- no small feat.

Regarding his involvement with SPME, Dr. Cohn acknowledged first and foremost SPME’s Immediate Past President, Professor Ed Beck. Dr. Cohn has long perceived that under Professor Beck’s guidance, SPME has been doing an essential job on college campuses; so he was honored when Professor Beck invited him to join the board.

He finds it easy to support and be active in SPME because being a Jewish American and a supporter of Israel presents no conflict due to the congruence of both countries’ interests, policies and priorities. It is clear that Israel’s cause is not a parochial issue. It is a just cause and its advocacy is advocacy for justice.

For Dr. Cohn, the need for SPME is clear. The resources of those who speak out on behalf of Israel are dwarfed by the funding sources available to those who seek to denigrate Israel. Israel's supporters don’t have large oil fields to underwrite their work. And the campus is a critical arena for work today on behalf of Israel, because this generation’s students are next generation’s leaders.

For advancing SPME’s work in the future, he would like to see the continued development of academically sound analyses to counter the prevailing anti-Israel ideology of all too much academic research and teaching on campuses and in professional fields today. He points to Lancet’s creation of a “Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance,” which asserts that Israel is to blame for poor health care for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The documented reality, however, is that life expectancy, infant mortality and other measures of health are better for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza than in many of the countries so critical of Israel This is in large part thanks to Israel.

Dr. Cohn asserts that we need more research, analysis and publications to counteract such misleading allegations.


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