Jewish leaders call Beck out on his false attack on George Soros

To quote a famous song from Sesame Street: “Three of these things belong together,” and the three things are unhinged, Glenn Beck and George Soros.

Anytime the name of the self-made billionaire and Soros is mentioned the right becomes unhinges, and Faux “news” madman Glenn Beck is unhinged.

With so few liberal billionaires around to attack, unlike the vast number of rightwing billionaires who are politically active, Soros is an easy target for the right. The name of Soros has reached the level of taking point to the right, and anything they want to discredit to their base they just add the words, “Soros-funded,” in front of anything.

Soros is a self-made man, something Republicans claim they admire, but in addition to his humanitarian giving, that includes helping end apartheid in South Africa by giving money for scholarships to black students there and helping end Communism by funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain, he also gives to Democrats.

That is his crime, or perhaps they hate him because he, unlike most GOP millionaires and billionaires, did not inherit his wealth.

But Beck went after Soros again this week with an hour-long smearfest against Soros with the ridiculous claim that he has somehow conspired with Democrats, progressives and the Obama administration to demolish the U.S. economy.

Media Matters, which finally received $1 million from Soros after the right falsely claimed he funded them for years, does another great job of debunking Beck’s lies. But the right will attack and try to discredit them because of the first and only contribution from Soros. It’s a good thing Media Matters lists its sources.

But the Jewish community reacted negatively to Beck’s over the top and false attacks and trivialization of the Holocaust to attack Soros.

Beck claims that as a child in Nazi-occupied Hungary, Soros survived by living with a non-Jewish family, “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff.” He claimed Soros never had any remorse even ad an adult.

In an article in the Nov. 11 of the “Jewish Week,” Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman called Beck out on his rant, saying, “it was totally over the top.” Foxman is also a child survivor who lived only because his parents turned him over to his Catholic nanny. He said the issue of the Holocaust “is so sensitive that I'm not even sure Holocaust survivors themselves are willing to make such judgments.”

“For a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say, there's a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps, that's horrific,” Foxman said in the Jewish Week. “It's totally off limits and over the top.”

Even more Jewish leaders called Beck out.

Elan Steinberg, vice president of The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, called the Beck accusations “monstrous; you don't make such accusations without proof, and I have seen no such proof.” Beck's charges, he said, “go to the heart of the instrumentalization and trivialization of the Holocaust."

Even non-Jewish religious leaders called Beck out.

Interfaith Alliance President Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy said Beck's “use of the Holocaust to discredit George Soros is beyond repugnant. The Holocaust is one of history’s most tragic events and those who survived it are owed our enduring respect.”