Consolation of the Isolated

Not long ago, broadcast host Glenn Beck predicted destruction for Israel over the summer, but that hasn’t deterred dozens of Israeli parliamentarians from meeting him when he visited the Knesset. After all, there were cameras there.

Glenn Beck is one of the most controversial figures in political discourse in America. His program on Fox News has since gone off air — maybe because even the conservative network realized that there was a dangerous degree of exaggeration in it. It’s one thing to accuse Barack Obama of ruining America and to boil plastic frogs in order to exhibit the way he treats the American people, but quite another thing to start talking about conspiracy theories involving socialists, Islamists and the American government.

His intensive use of associations related to the Shoah has made the majority of the Jewish community distance itself from him. Among other things, he accused the Jewish billionaire, George Soros, a Holocaust survivor whose family perished in the death camps, of having collaborated as a young boy (during the Holocaust) with Nazis in the confiscation of other Jews’ property.

This is not just about a single statement, but rather about a real campaign, which originated from the fact that Soros bolsters liberal causes with his money. Beck’s statements won wall-to-wall condemnation in the American Jewish community. Beck’s critics — who are many, and not only on the liberal left but also on the right — claim that he is a demagogue resorting to a precarious rhetoric to illustrate his arguments.

Nonetheless, a stranger in yesterday’s session of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption [and Diaspora Affairs], would have thought that a Righteous among the Nations was visiting, one of the holiest of the holy and the rarest of rare. The committee meeting, chaired by Danny Danon, has never seen a deliberation more crammed with the members of Knesset, who normally do not make up a particularly impressive presence at the committee’s gatherings. They just never stopped arriving — for indeed, the cameras were rolling.

The Admiring Members of the Knesset

Glenn Beck himself looked surprised by the power of the welcoming ceremony, which in fact was complete prostration before him. After a short speech that he gave in front of the audience, where he talked about the need to “tell the truth,” our Knesset members merrily surrendered to glorifying his name.

Some of them in clumsy English, others in Hebrew, proclaimed their admiration for and appreciation to Beck; from Tzipi Hotoveli, who recalled her first meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu on the occasion of the event, to Knesset Member Michael Ben-Ari, who said that after listening to the guest’s remarks, he feels like they could switch places and Beck could have his seat in the Knesset. Overall, the far right seemed cheerful, and in order to demonstrate this, after the meet and greet, Beck had a brief exchange of whispered secrets with Baruch Marzel for a dessert.

The things Beck says apropos the world media not presenting the Israeli side accurately hit our emotions very precisely. He specializes in creating assertions and his argumentation is, in part, fascinating. And of course, when he highlights a campaign to de-legitimize Israel, he does artful work that serves the Israelis.

Those dealing with American politics were glad to say hello to him in Israel, but that does not lessen the controversy surrounding him. He’s never embraced this manner in front of a committee of the American Congress. In no country of the world would someone issuing doomsday prophecies about its elimination be accepted. Less than two months ago Beck projected that Israel may be destroyed in the coming summer. A proud country is not happy about such prophets.

Overall, it’s been a sad spectacle. For our parliamentarians, it was enough that Beck so strongly condemned the horrible massacre of the Fogel family for him to get a tight hug, not to mention the collective flattery. The isolation is enveloping us, and that is the comfort of the isolated — people like Beck.

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Reading material for more and less polite responders:

Glenn Beck foresees destruction of Israel:

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201105260035

The Anti-Defamation League leading the fight against anti-Semitism defines Beck’s conduct toward Soros as “horrific”:

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5906_52.htm

Jeffrey Goldberg, perhaps one of the most influential authors in the U.S. today, asks whether Beck has a problem with Jews and points out that eight out of nine people Beck named as enemies of America are Jews:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/glenn-becks-jewish-problem/69682/

And the reader would be wise to do so.