SHMUEL KATZ & JOBOTINSKY

Jabotinsky's hassid

• By ELLIOT JAGER

Shmuel Katz is probably the last remaining link to Ze'ev Jabotinsky outside the prophet's own relations. Last week, on the occasion of his forthcoming 90th birthday on December 9, I went to Tel Aviv to see him.

It was the week in which the remnants of the Jabotinsky movement suffered yet another blow with Uzi Landau's defeat in the race for the Likud Central Committee chairmanship.

'Jabotinsky's photograph should be taken down from the wall of Likud headquarters. I don't want him to 'see' and 'hear' what goes on there,' says Katz.

The Johannesburg-born polemicist, slowed down physically by the infirmities of age - poor circulation in his legs and the after-effects of a stroke - now resides in an agreeable 'assisted living' facility. It's hard for Katz to get around, but his intellectual powers, and ideological steadfastness, remain strong.

A lapsed Jabotinskyte, I wonder aloud if the shifting facts on the ground - the past four years of war, Palestinian demographics, the polarization within Israeli society over the territories, and the constellation of international forces - should not lead us to rethink our stance.

Isn't Ariel Sharon right that a tactical withdrawal - 7,000 Jews from among 1 million Arabs - is militarily and diplomatically wise?

No sooner do I phrase the question than I realize how trifling my litany of contemporary challenges must sound to a man whom Jabotinsky himself sent to London in 1940 to propagate the cause.

Yet Katz isn't irritated. He simply outlines the unshakable truth: 'Leave Gaza, and Jews will be killed in Ashkelon.

'The Arabs have launched a war and we are responding as if it is some kind of squabble. When they say they want to get rid of Israel, that we have no right to exist, they mean it.'

A knock on the door. A nurse enters to administer eye drops and examine Katz's especially bothersome left leg.

When she leaves, the former member of the Irgun high command ('minister of foreign affairs, you might say') concludes his thought:

'Gaza won't be the end of our concessions. Watch.'

So what's the answer?

'There is nothing more left to do except to keep fighting them.

'We can win the war. We just have not won yet.'


WHILE MUCH of the secular Right has mellowed - in Sharon's case shifting to the center - those who have remained steadfast in their 'not one inch' worldview come largely from the theological, sometimes apocalyptic Right.

I ask Katz how this sits with him given that Jabotinsky was a 19th-century liberal, a rationalist and individualist.

Katz admits he has long been wary of Orthodox motivations. He has never forgotten that the religious - Zionist and non-Zionist - collaborated with Labor.

'Yes, they do cause me worry. I would have liked to put a number of questions to them.

'I can only hope Uzi Landau doesn't buckle,' and that, somehow, it is the secular Right that prevails within Likud.

Though he is not devout, Katz believes profoundly that the Land of Israel was given to the Jewish people. That unshakable faith comes not from scripture, but from the 1920 British Mandate.

'Read it.'

I do. The mandate system was established in international law by the Treaty of Versailles in 1922. It charged Britain with 'putting into effect' the 1917 Balfour Declaration; called for 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,' and recognized 'the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine' and 'reconstituting their national home in that country.'

Whatever history's twists and turns, Katz sees no point in ceding any of the rights bestowed by the Mandate.

Is such rock-solid ideology out of touch with today's realities? Maybe. But sitting opposite the man in his small sunny room cluttered with mugs, books, two telephones, newspapers, and writing pads - though remarkably few personal mementos - I reflect on his extraordinary career.

After the Irgun, he joined Menachem Begin's Herut Party, serving in Israel's first Knesset. Katz and Begin did not get on; each felt the other was laying (false) claim to be the true inheritor of Jabotinsky's mantle.

Disappointed with Begin's leadership Katz quit politics. From 1951 to 1977 he ran the Karni publishing house and brought out the Megiddo Hebrew & English Dictionary.

In 1977, when voters finally broke Labor's monopoly on power and elected Begin prime minister, the two rivals reconciled. But Begin rejected Katz's advice to create a powerful hasbara ministry and their brief rapprochement collapsed.

All the while Katz has been faithfully articulating the Jabotinsky line. Battleground is probably the finest Zionist polemical tract published; Days of Fire is the story of the Irgun; The Hollow Peace is a denunciation of Begin's concessions to Anwar Sadat. Lone Wolf, his latest book, is Katz's magnum opus, a two-volume biography of Jabotinsky.

Katz is nothing if not persevering. He's just sent off an op-ed warning that 'a Palestinian state will be the launching pad for the next phase of the campaign for all of Palestine.'

Till 120, Mr. Katz.


– From a November 29, 2004 Jerusalem Post column

NEWSPAPERS NOT THE INTERNET

Save my job - read a newspaper

• By ELLIOT JAGER

The crumbling front page in my hand is from the October 7, 1973 Sunday New York Times. The headline - which runs across eight columns and two lines - reads: 'Arabs and Israelis Battle on Two Fronts; Egyptians Bridge Suez; Air Duels Intense.'

This is not a facsimile. It's the genuine newspaper saved all these years.

I am a newspaper junkie. In addition to thousands of clippings from the pre-Google era, there are about a dozen vintage newspapers in my archive: like the Times from Tuesday, June 9, 1981: 'Israeli Jets Destroy Atomic Reactor; Attack Condemned by US and Arab Nations;' and the one from Monday, February 12, 1979: 'A Khomeini Victory.'

Why this trip down memory lane? Because newspapers, with which I became enamored in high-school and through which I earn a living today, are supposedly going the way of black-and-white television and the eight-track cassette.

If true, this is a bad thing because traditional newspapers offer information in a format that cannot be duplicated by radio, television - or the Web.

As the Post's Yehezkel Laing reported on Friday, fewer and fewer Israelis are reading - forget about subscribing to - the Hebrew dailies. Only a handful of the people I know have any newspaper delivered.

It's a global phenomenon. Americans bought more newspapers in 1960 than they did in 2003. Only 6% of young Americans subscribe to a weekday newspaper; even among the over-45 crowd a paltry 30 percent read the dailies.

Still, newspapers everywhere claim to 'penetrate' the population. Sixty percent of Israelis, 57% of Americans, and 70% of Brits are said to be exposed to daily newspapers, perhaps at the office, barber shop or cafe.

The Friday weekend editions remain popular with Israelis - many petrol stations offer you a free paper when you gas up - though even weekend readership is dropping.

When I ask folks why they don't read a newspaper they say they don't have time, or the news is out of date by the time they get to the paper, or they'd rather not know what's going on.

Well, I'm trying to make a living here, folks, and this kind of thinking isn't helping.


TO THE people who don't want to know the news, all I can say is, please don't vote come election day. And to those who don't want a daily paper on their doorstep because it may contain views they disagree with: If you crave serenity, go live in a ashram.

On the other hand, I do sympathize with people who say they just don't have time for a daily newspaper. Anyone who lurches to work on a Dan or Egged bus could hardly be expected to read a paper as well, though heroically some try.

Still, organizing time is a matter of priorities. Previous generations didn't have the time-saving conveniences we enjoy; yet our parents and grandparents made time, not just for a morning paper, but often for an afternoon one as well.

True, news breaks between the time a paper goes to print and the time it's delivered to your door. Which is why the Web does serve a 'breaking news' function. It is also a great way to peruse out-of-town newspapers.

But neither radio, introduced in the 1920s, nor cable television news, which came on-stream in 1982 - or today's Wi-Fi Internet - can supplant newspapers. Because in an age of information overload, newspapers give you not only the 'who, what, where and when' but also the 'why-this-matters' context that is so necessary to be truly informed. By scanning the front page of a quality newspaper you also get a good sense about what's really important.

But why not read the newspaper for free - as most are - on the Web? Because people don't read articles on computer screens with the attention hard-copy newspapers demand and the comprehension they elicit.

The medium via which information is imparted influences how it will be comprehended. Reading a newspaper on the Web is like drinking skim milk. You can fool yourself into thinking you've had the real thing, but you haven't. And at many newspapers (though not this one), there's little connection between the Web site and the editorial side.

Moreover, the role of the media goes beyond reporting news to serving as a tool for political socialization. It is through the media that political values are inculcated. The media instruct citizens as to what events mean for them as individuals. And it is the media which seek to persuade, through editorials and coverage, what people should think.

For instance, the media in modern Germany promote zero-tolerance toward neo-Nazis - which some might call bias, but I call responsible journalism.

The question is, should we entrust such responsibilities to a bunch of geeks slapping the news on the Web at breakneck speed, or to journalists working under the checks and balances of seasoned editors? (The Post's Web site is actually run by the paper's editorial department.)

Enlightened readers know that newspapers provide the breadth and depth the electronic media alone can't duplicate. And advertisers know it too. The Newspaper Association of America reported that advertising expenditures for the fourth quarter of 2004 increased by 4.2% over the same period a year earlier. Savvy advertisers want to reach people who go beyond 'click and scroll.'

I'm not a Luddite. All I am saying is that when it comes to newspapers, technology can only take you so far. Perhaps the ideal way to read a paper that's not locally available is by subscribing to the page-by-page electronic facsimile.

Combining Wi-Fi and a facsimile allows you, at last, to take your digital newspaper into the toilet - just like the genuine article.

– From a March 7, 2005 Jerusalem Post column

CAPITALISM AND THE JEWS

For capitalism with a Jewish heart

• By ELLIOT JAGER

I am not a communist, but something has gone terribly wrong lately with capitalism. Take the Carrefour supermarket chain in France, which earned $1.8 billion in 2004 but pays its employees so poorly that some of them can't afford to shop where they work. Take the fact that worldwide businesses are spending less and less of their revenues on wages, creating vast numbers of working poor and fostering 'jobless' economic recoveries.

Maybe it began in 2001 - when my attention was distracted by the Palestinian war against our buses and cafes - with the collapse of energy-trading giant Enron. Dirty accounting (and worse) threw 6,000 workers out on the street.

Or maybe capitalism's conceit goes back to the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1990. The disappearance of ideological competition from Marxism-Leninism may be one reason capitalism has become increasingly pitiless. If competition is inherently good - in the marketplace and in the marketplace of ideas - its absence has made capitalism a self-satisfied monopoly.

I'm not interested in economic dogma, which I don't understand anyway, but in the lives of ordinary people trying to make ends meet. Back in 1932, during the Great Depression, New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt summed up capitalist economics this way: 'The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory [is that] if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward... through the ranks.'

Trickle up or trickle down.

Trouble is these days the trickle seems to have dried up at both ends. In Israel, productivity (and profit) has risen far higher than wages, while thousands of actual jobs formerly held by Israelis have been exported.

You need only read Larry Derfner's report in last Friday's UpFront magazine to grasp how many thousands of Israelis will be making Pessah this week thanks only to a network of charities; or to understand that working is no longer an answer for many people because almost a third of salaried Israelis earn NIS 1,900 a month or less.

From time immemorial there have been those who rule and those who are ruled. Similarly, in the economic realm there have always been people with money and poor folks. That's the harsh, inescapable reality of life. And the experiment called communism - to create an egalitarian world with the abolition of private property - was a colossal failure.

Yet it seems capitalism absent communist competition is getting meaner. We always knew selfishness could be an effective way to organize society - something the Reds never understood. But lately selfishness seems to know no bounds. Five thousand workers at the British carmaker MG Rover, for instance, will be out on the street - partly, they allege, because their bosses robbed the company blind.

If I do what's good for me, and you do what's good for you, and we both act rationally - the outcome, according to capitalist economists, should be good for both of us. Maybe globalization has thrown a wrench into the system. The ability to function beyond national boundaries, and thus communal ethical standards, seems to have warped the capitalist economic model. Capitalism run amok seems to encourages wealth accumulation while discouraging old-fashioned personal and corporate responsibility.

Yesterday's Post carried a business story about how 'Wall Street suffered its worst single day in nearly two years,' with the Dow dropping 191 points, its worst performance since May 2003. The AP dispatch continued: 'Bond investors were pleased with Friday's results, however, as the bond market continued to rally.' Huh?

Maybe capitalists get away with so much stealing from workers and stockholders because many of us have given up trying to understand the business and finance pages of our newspapers. But force yourself to read and you'll learn that last week 15 New York Stock Exchange traders were indicted for stealing; that Maurice 'Hank' Greenberg, the head of AIG ('the world's leading international insurance and financial services organization'), lied about AIG's earnings while sneaking $2 billion worth of company stock to his wife.

The Economist called him 'A crafty, patient executive.' Right.


I'M NOT out to overturn capitalism - there's nothing to replace it - but can't we make its application, at least in the Jewish state, less exploitative? For instance, Israeli law does not obligate a boss to pay a sick worker his full wages the first few days he's away from the workplace (even if he brings a doctor's note). But a compassionate Jewish capitalist could opt to pay a sick worker his full pay.

Sunday morning Israelis woke up to news that a threatened strike at the country's banks had been postponed by order of the National Labor Court. Now, I've never met a bank teller I liked, but the jobs of 4,000 bank workers are in jeopardy because 'free market reforms' will change the kind of business banks are permitted to do. Compassionate, Jewish, capitalists should worry about the fate of these men and women.

The average gross monthly salary is down NIS 309 to NIS 7,439 (about $1,695). The 'good news' is that the number of really low-paying service industry jobs has increased by 2.4 percent. At an April 10 news conference Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu promised Israel would soon be one of the 10 richest countries in the world. Nice. But will we still be the country with the greatest disparity between rich and poor, where 57 percent of Israeli households finish the month in overdraft?

I know it isn't fair, but over-exposure to Eretz Nehederet, the Thursday night television satire program in which a Netanyahu look-alike portrays the minister as a dissolute, smooth-talking, obfuscator, makes it hard for me to take the real character seriously.

So I asked economist Jonathan Lipow about Netanyahu's idea of, for instance, cutting entitlements to stimulate economic growth. 'There is NO evidence,' Lipow practically shouted in an e-mail exchange, 'that cutting entitlements per se stimulates economic growth. Period.'

Even where Netanyahu's strategy may be right, his implementation is wrong, said Lipow. 'There would have been far more gain, and far less pain, in child-allowance cuts had the government maintained funding levels for those children already benefiting.'

Lipow thinks a fairer approach to grow the economy while not penalizing the workers would be for the government to use redistributive taxation.

Like - I suspect - many people, I find economic theory impenetrable. But Lipow's approach strikes me as capitalism with a Jewish heart.

The specter I see haunting a capitalism unchallenged by communism is gluttonous take-no-prisoners greed. Call me na•ve, but I want Israeli politicians to design an economic strategy that doesn't offer us false choices: a government that either taxes and spends with abandon, or one that embraces pure laissez-faire rigidity.

I want a little less economic dogma and a little more Jewish heart.


– From an April 18, 2005 Jerusalem Post column

FAT & SOUTH BEACH

Chewing the fat

• By ELLIOT JAGER

Blame it on Sidney Taubenfeld. Sidney and I were childhood pals in the early 1960s on New York's Lower East Side. I was a skinny runt who, especially at the table, made my mother's life miserable. One day, Mrs. Taubenfeld invited me for supper and put a bottle of ketchup on the table. Suddenly, foods I wouldn't touch became flavorful. That's when my addiction to sugar, and - with it, a life-long struggle with being fat - began.

Roger Cohen, who writes the always-worth-reading 'Globalist' column for the Herald Tribune, recently described returning to New York from an extended overseas journey. As his taxi made its way from JFK Airport, Cohen looked out the window and noticed that Americans had become fatter and fatter - something he attributes to dysfunctional American culture.

Cohen wrote that he always worried about being squashed up next to a fat person during a plane journey. Then the blubber-basher added: 'Let's face it: Nobody likes to be shapeless or gets that way without suffering. And let's face this: If you punish yourself by getting fat, you may also want to punish others. In obesity lurks anger.'

I'd always had a lot of anger in me, and I have always been fat, but I never put the two together. Maybe one day I'll find myself sitting next to Cohen on a plane and he can elucidate.

It may be hard for the skinny and smug to appreciate this, but grappling with obesity - like post-aliya absorption into Israeli society - is a-one-day-at-a-time struggle.

Some 39 percent of Israelis are overweight and 23% are grossly overweight, or obese. Men tend to be overweight; women, obese. Israeli Arabs are fatter than Israeli Jews. Partly, this reflects a preference for larger women in Arab society, but it's also the paradoxical result of poverty: In developed societies being fat is associated with being poor.

That may be changing. Obesity is America is growing fastest among those making more than $60,000 a year.

For many of us, the day after Pessah signaled the dawn of yet another Sisyphean effort to lose weight. Yet for all the chatter about obesity - blame it on metabolism, social class, emotions, genetics, lack of exercise - whatever, according to The Merck Manual its actual cause 'is unknown, [though] the mechanism is simple - consuming more calories than are expended.'

Some blame the financially gluttonous purveyors of addictive junk food for the fat epidemic. Take Hardee's, a McDonald's wannabe, which markets a 'Monster Thickburger' packing 1,420 calories. Critics label such processed meals 'food porn.' But by the time you realize how ghastly processed foods are for you, it's too late. You're hooked.


NOW, I could join a class-action suit against companies which produce addictive foods - maybe go after Heinz over my craving for their scrumptious, sugar-saturated, condiment. But that would be like saying I have no free will. And, whatever my weaknesses, I take personal responsibility over what goes into my mouth.

Then there's an outfit called the Center for Consumer Freedom, which has been placing full-page advertisements in major US newspapers warning that the common man is being 'force-fed a steady diet of obesity myths by the 'food police,' trial lawyers, and even the American government.' The campaign is being orchestrated by Richard Berman, a Washington lobbyist for Big Food, Big Restaurants and Big Tobacco. Berman recently told The Washington Post that 'junk science, intimidation tactics, and even threats of violence' are being used to push an 'extremist' food agenda.

Maybe Berman is a follower of economist Milton Friedman, who commented back in 1974: 'Do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? My answer to that is, no they do not.'

But it strikes me that there's a third way between 'junk science' and 'food porn.' People have a personal responsibility to resist Monster Thickburgers. And corporations have an ethical responsibility not to market damaging foods.

And whether out of altruism or pragmatism, the good news on the corporate front, at least in America, was Kraft's announcement back in January that it would stop advertising addictive snacks to children. And other US companies are promising to remove harmful trans fats, added in processing to promote shelf life, from their products. Unfortunately, Big Food in Israel has made no similar moves. Only now is there talk in government circles about listing trans fats on product ingredient labels.

Myself, I'm not waiting for government or industry to get off their fat asses. For the past six months I've been on Arthur Agatston's South Beach Diet, which emphasizes breaking sugar addiction. I've learned to pick foods low on the glycemic food index so my blood sugar level doesn't fall too rapidly (making me famished). Generally speaking, Agatston advocates keeping away from processed foods, white bread, white rice, potatoes, pasta and corn.

I'm not pushing South Beach - though I've lost 10 kilos. Anyone with a weight problem should do what works for them, such as checking out the 2005 Dietary Guidelines recently issued by the US government. These emphasize fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat milk, as well as the avoidance of trans fats and added sugars.

During Pessah, I cheated. It's almost impossible not to.

But I am back on the wagon, Sidney.


– From a May 2, 2005 Jerusalem Post column

Louis Farrakhan, the Jews & "Middlesex"

Unrepentant bigot

• By ELLIOT JAGER


In his brilliant epic Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides tells the story of a white swindler, Jimmy Zizmo, who poses as the light-skinned black 'prophet' Fard Muhammad. It is during the Depression, and Zizmo has established a cult among Detroit's downtrodden Negroes. But after he dupes some of them into conducting a human sacrifice, and with the FBI on his tail, Fard/Zizmo mysteriously disappears, leaving Calliope, the novel's central character, to declare: 'My maternal grandfather returned to the nowhere from which he'd come.'

The nonfiction account of the Nation of Islam's founding is even wackier. It is the spring of 1931 and Elijah Poole is recovering from yet another drunken stupor. His long-suffering wife, Clara, brings home the 'real' Jimmy Zizmo, an inspirational 'Muslim' preacher who calls himself Master Wallace D. Fard. 'I know you think I'm white,' Fard tells Poole, 'but I'm not. I have come to save [black America].'

Fard explains that he's assumed the appearance of a Caucasian to spy on the white man, and instructs Poole on the fundamentals of NOI theology: Caucasians are 'human devils,' inferior to blacks. The white race is the result of a gene-manipulation experiment gone awry, conducted by a black scientist named Yakub 6,000 years ago. Everything the white man does is rooted in 'trickology' - deception.

In 1933, before the 'real' Fard disappears, he urges Poole to study Henry Ford's anti-Semitic diatribes and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, as well as the Bible and Koran. Armed with this knowledge Poole, now known as Elijah Muhammad, reinvigorates the cult. He eventually converts Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), Malcolm Little (Malcolm X) and the charismatic calypso balladeer, Louis 'the Charmer' Walcott.

When Muhammad died in 1975, Walcott - now known as Minister Louis Farrakhan - took charge of the cult. And over the past 30 years this talented demagogue has become black America's paramount leader.

No one but Farrakhan can bring a million African-Americans into the streets; no one but Farrakhan commands instant respect among the black masses; and no one but Farrakhan is held in such esteem that neither the inanity of his theology nor his long trail of xenophobic vitriol can scare away mainstream black politicians and pastors - or even, for that matter, Bill Clinton.

Forget the negatives, his defenders say; focus on Farrakhan's positive messages of black self-help. Indeed, a dysfunctional black America needs all the help it can get. As The New York Times's Brent Staples wrote last week: 'African-American teenagers are beset... by dangerous myths about race. The most poisonous one defines middle-class normalcy and achievement as 'white,' while embracing violence, illiteracy and drug dealing as 'authentically black.'

It is within this toxic environment that Farrakhan has been tirelessly preaching abstinence, family values and responsibility. Precisely, I think, because he laces these messages with chauvinism, racial supremacy and Jew-hatred, his movement has achieved an unheard-of level of legitimacy in black America - where 30 percent of the population is contaminated by classical anti-Semitism.

On May 2 Farrakhan was back in the limelight - he'd been sidelined by cancer and acute back pain - holding a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington to announce a 'Millions More Movement,' a march on Washington set for October 14-16 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first Million Man March.

Farrakhan grows increasingly savvy with age. But even with a cleaned-up act his attitude toward Jews comes across. He told a February gathering: 'Listen, Jewish people don't have no hands that are free of the blood of us. They owned slave ships, they bought and sold us. They raped and robbed us. If you can't face that, why you gonna condemn me for showing you your past, how then can you atone and repent if somebody don't open the book with courage - you don't have that - but I'll be damned, I got it.'


AMERICAN JEWRY faces a dilemma: Should Jewish organizations urge mainstream African-American leaders to dissociate themselves from the October march on the grounds that it is spearheaded by an unrepentant bigot, or should they keep shtum since black leaders won't be deterred anyway and Farrakhan will only feed off Jewish opposition?

Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, a man whose thinking I respect, cautioned me not to get too worked up about Farrakhan - 'I detect a certain been-there-done-that flavor to this new event' he wrote in an email exchange. Page also challenged my assessment that Farrakhan is the paramount black leader: 'Black Americans are getting past their 'Black Moses syndrome,' in which we long for another Martin Luther King.' Farrakhan 'still has rap-star charisma among young black males,' Page says, but 'anti-Semitism has never been Farrakhan's major draw' and attacking him only wins him sympathy.

Among the black leaders who turned out for the Farrakhan news conference were: Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams and Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women. Not present, but reportedly backing the event, were Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC's delegate in Congress and NAACP chairman Julian Bond, as well as Coretta Scott King, widow of Rev. Martin Luther King.

Referring obliquely to the Jewish community, Farrakhan told the gathering: 'There are those who... are threatened that we are all here together. And so, one by one, they will come to pick us off.'

But the presence of Farrakhan's co-organizer and, some suggest, heir-apparent, Malik Zulu Shabazz, sent an even more sinister message. At a July 2003 news conference, Shabazz declared: 'If 3,000 people perished in the World Trade Center attacks and the Jewish population is 10 percent, you show me records of 300 Jewish people dying in the World Trade Center... We're daring anyone to dispute this truth. They got their people out.'

In advance of the press club announcement, the ADL's Abe Foxman sent letters to black leaders, imploring: 'When will someone in the African-American community stand up and say the Million Man March has a positive message but the pied piper is a racist and anti-Semite?' Merely asking that question strikes rap impresario and black power broker Russell Simmons, who dialogues with liberal rabbis and does big business with Jewish and Israeli Hollywood, as 'disrespectful' and likely to 'spread anti-Semitism.'

'A few days ago,' Simmons announced, 'I personally witnessed [Farrakhan] affirm, 'A Muslim cannot hate a Jew. We are all members of the family of Abraham and all of us should maintain dialogue and mutual respect.''

It's not easy to find a Jewish macher willing to publicly address the Farrakhan dilemma - or criticize Foxman for his confrontational approach. But Rabbi David Saperstein, of Reform Judaism's Religious Action Center - who seems to reflect the dominant Jewish line - did tell me that public criticism of Farrakhan is counterproductive.

His is not a position easily dismissed. Let's face it: Protesting is unlikely to change any minds, and is certain to antagonize. So I went to see Foxman, who happened to be in Jerusalem last week. He has been in his current job for 18 years and with ADL since 1965. Foxman, who survived Hitler's war against the Jews, sheltered by a Polish Christian nursemaid, is not a man riddled with self-doubt.

He has zero tolerance for racism, calling it 'a sad, sad commentary that the only pied piper African-Americans have is somebody so infected with Jew-hatred.' And it is the Jews' decade-long failure to get this message across to the black leadership that has allowed anti-Semitism to fester.

Tactically, he realizes that speaking up gives Farrakhan more prominence, but for Foxman that's beside the point. He isn't telling blacks not to march or calling for a Jewish counter-demonstration, but he won't airbrush out Louis Farrakhan's racism.

It's a tough call. Our challenge is to decide whether Jews' experience with a fruitcake Austrian painter has anything to teach us about the rantings of a black American calypso performer.


–From a May 16 column in The Jerusalem Post