Ken Berwitz
This is the start of a new series: The Idiot Of The Week. The first “winner” (if that is even the right term) is CNN\’s Ashleigh Banfield, who decided it would be a great idea to ask Donald Trump supporter/conservative blogger Jeffrey Lord about Trump\’s intention to ban all Muslims from coming into the country this way:\
“If you supplant the word \’Jews\’ for \’Muslims\’ in a lot of the rhetoric that we\’ve had this morning, I think people would find it sort of cringe-worthy and reminiscent of a really ugly time in our history. There have been Jewish terrorist attacks. Should we therefore ask no Jews to please apply for a visa?
“From a period of 1980 to 1985 there were a reported 18 terror attacks committed in the United States by Jews, 15 of them committed by the Jewish Defense League. The head of the Jewish Defense league was in jail awaiting trial…accused of trying to bomb a mosque in Culver City, trying to bomb [US Congressman] Darrel Issa\’s office, an Arab-American.”
How idiotic is this? Let\’s see:
-The incidents in question occurred over 30 years ago;-If you read the FBI report Banfield bases her comment on, you find that, although a couple seem pretty clearly to be the work of the Jewish Defense League (which barely even exists any more), not one of them was definitively found to be committed by Jews (go to pages 16-18, from which this idiocy was pulled, and see for yourself);-The couple of “terrorist acts” that seem clearly to be the work of the JDL were not random at all, they were specifically against nazi war criminals living in the United States. No schools, no movie theaters, no workplace parties;-The JDL and its related groups were, and remain, condemned and shunned by almost all Jewish organizations. The Kach Party, which was aligned with the JDL, is banned in Israel;-In any event, the JDL\’s primary stated goal, methods notwithstanding, has always been to protect Jews from anti-semitism. It has never stated a goal of taking over land or establishing the equivalent of a Jewish “caliphate”.-The total number of casualties in all the incidents described in this 30 year old report, are 4 dead and 18 injured. That is a fraction of just the one attack in San Bernardino, which claimed 14 lives and injured over 30 others.
Other than that, it made a lot of sense.
I award Ashleigh Banfield Idiot Of The Week “honors” because her comment, aside from being obnoxious to the nth degree, is, well, just plain idiotic.
