Stupidity and evil aren’t mutually exclusive but they’re not synonymous and shouldn’t be treated as such. Nevertheless, people’s penchant for equating or confusing the two is rampant.
The almost symmetrical reaction this week to Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust comments and Amnesty International’s report on “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians” is a perfect case in point.
Though both public expressions of antisemitism deserve reproach, they have little in common other than the peculiar shock that each elicited.
LET’S START with the brouhaha surrounding The View cohost’s asinine description of the Nazi genocide, which she voiced on Monday’s show. Goldberg uttered her now-infamous remarks during a discussion on a Tennessee school board’s decision to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, Maus, from the eighth-grade curriculum.
The book recounts author/cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s parents’ experience as survivors of the German atrocity. The debate was supposed to focus on the justification, or lack thereof, for cutting it from the McMinn County language-arts syllabus.
The reason cited for the ban was the “rough, objectionable language” of the work, which also contains a drawing of a naked woman.
Instead of sticking to the issue of free speech and whether the above should warrant censorship in this context, Goldberg said she was surprised that it was nudity and not the Holocaust itself that bothered the educators.
Cohost Joy Behar’s contribution was to imply that nudity was likely “a canard to throw you off from the fact that they don’t like history that makes white people look bad.”
Goldberg added, “Well, this is white people doing it to white people, so y’all gonna fight amongst yourselves.”
When the conversation turned (hypocritically) to conservatives trying to avoid dealing with the history of racism in America, Goldberg said, “If you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it, because the Holocaust isn’t about race.”
As if this weren’t bad enough, she went on to explain that it was actually about “man’s inhumanity to man,” which involved “two white groups of people.”
ADOLF HITLER would have begged to differ. After all, his conjured-up narrative was that Germans were members of a pure and superior “Aryan” race, to the exclusion of all others. And while these “inferiors” included blacks and gypsies (Roma), the focus of his “Final Solution” was the Jews.
In other words, the Holocaust was precisely and specifically about race. It sure as hell wasn’t some “inhumane” white-on-white crime. The very depiction of it as such not only minimizes mass murder wherever it occurs; it completely ignores the particularity of the premeditated, systematic, torturous slaughter of six million Jews – simply for the color of the blood in their veins.
If Goldberg hadn’t been a moron of monumental proportions and so beloved by the wokerati that she fancies herself to possess far more profundity than any old Hollywood actress with knee-jerk politics, she would either have been better informed or capable of keeping her trap shut under certain circumstances.
Unfortunately, for the darling of the Left, she didn’t merely open her mouth wide at the wrong moment; she shoved her foot in it for all to witness. Her apology on social media, accompanied by another one at the opening of the following day’s broadcast, turned out to be insufficient for her bosses at the network.
“Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments,” ABC News president Kim Godwin said in a statement. “While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time and reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
Goldberg was incensed. Since that announcement, she has threatened to resign.
That’s her choice, of course, just as it’s ABC’s aim not to lose viewers and advertising revenue that enable it to pay Goldberg millions of dollars per year. Angry calls for her to be fired and the show to be canceled are thus entirely unnecessary.
Political conservatives who oppose the “cancel culture” instigated by the Left ought to keep this in mind. The best way to punish Goldberg – whose made-up name is as false as her premises – is simply to stop watching The View. The rest will take care of itself.
THE SAME cannot be said about Amnesty International. The UK-based nongovernmental organization, which boasts being a “global movement of more than 10 million people who take injustice personally” and is “campaigning for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all,” carries weight in a way that Goldberg does not.
For one thing, Amnesty was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 and the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights in 1978. For another, it’s been treated like a reliable authority on the state of world affairs practically since its inception in 1961.
Never mind that its reputation is as ill-deserved as its bogus claim to be “independent of any political ideology.” Whatever good it’s done occasionally for the cause of injustice is completely overshadowed by its outrageous bias. Indeed, Amnesty is about as far to the left as they come.
Its latest anti-Israel screed – disguised as a body of comprehensive research – would be enough for a casual observer to realize the extent of its radicalism. But the February 1 report accusing the Jewish state of “apartheid against the Palestinians” through a “cruel system of domination [that constitutes] a crime against humanity” is simply par for the course of the NGO’s ongoing agenda.
According to Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnès Callamard, Israel treats Palestinians “[w]hether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights.”
She added, “We found that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid. The international community has an obligation to act.”
THIS IS only a tiny taste of the 211-page pack of lies designed to delegitimize the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 and its continued existence today. The document, like its authors and the outlawed Palestinian propagandists from whom they gleaned their “data,” has nothing to do with “human rights.”
Nor should it have aroused such astonishment, given Amnesty’s record of blatant hatred for the collective Jew. That the report received condemnations from across the spectrum in Israel and abroad is both a positive sign and proof that even a hallowed and oft-cited organization is capable of going too far for comfort.
Comparing Israelis to Nazis, by alleging that they consider Palestinians to be “an inferior racial group,” is an antisemitic ploy that provides justification for terrorism against innocents. It’s a classic inversion of victim and perpetrator that must be discredited, loudly and clearly.
To place Amnesty International in the same category as Whoopi Goldberg, however, is a mistake. The latter made a fool of herself and may well be on the way to the unemployment line. The former, on the other hand, will go on backing the world’s worst elements while enjoying the elevated status of “human rights” champions.