— In December, I covered speculation that Jimmy Carter’s surprise "Al Het" to American Jews was cynical, a means of smoothing his grandson’s way to a Georgia state Senate seat and a political career. I covered it because of the loud buzz, the conventional wisdom that this was the case — but I was skeptical. Such political capital for a state senate seat?
Jim Galloway, a veteran politics watcher at the Atlanta Journal Constitution now has a timeline out, and sure enough, Carter’s outreach had little to do with his grandson Jason’s senate bid. How do we know this? Carter launched the outreach before the seat became available.
The actual story is at once more mundane — and more compelling:
The rift between the Jewish community and the man who engineered the Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt bothered Emmet Bondurant, a well-known Atlanta attorney who sits on the regional board of the Anti-Defamation League. He is not Jewish.
Bondurant’s career stretches back four decades — in the 1960s, he was the lead litigator in the U.S. Supreme Court case that brought the concept of “one man, one vote” to Georgia. More recently, he has led the legal opposition to the state’s requirement that voters supply photo ID before casting a ballot.
Serving with Bondurant on the ADL board was Miles Alexander, co-chairman of the Kilpatrick Stockton law firm — and perhaps the most influential behind-the-scenes figure in Atlanta politics that you’ve never heard of. The low-profile Alexander, who is Jewish, has backed the winner in every mayoral race since Sam Massell. His wife, Elaine Alexander, was co-chairman of the campaigns for both Kasim Reed and Shirley Franklin.
Bondurant persuaded Alexander to join him on the Carter Center advisory board in June 2008. It did not go over well with many of Alexander’s friends. In December of that year, as a member of the advisory board, Bondurant said he and Alexander began talking about the need to reconcile the former president with the Jewish community.
“Some way needed to be found to heal this wound and bring back people who were once together, and should be together again,” Bondurant said.
— A few weeks ago, I wrote about the perils of posting on the Huffington Post. A spokesman said the site endeavors to clear away anti-Semitic commentary. Huff-Watch, a relentless (and anonymous) analyst and critic of the site, makes a case that this endeavor is at times sloppy, to say the least. Blog posts are supposed to be "pre-moderated" and news items are supposed to be "post-moderated" because of their volume, but HuffWatch shows that this is inconsistent: News items have at times pre-moderated and at others not. In many instances, anti-Semitic material gets through, and stays onsite for a short period.
I’m not sure I’d draw Huff-Watch’s conclusion that this is policy — it seems to be more a matter of handling the massive volume. Moreover, the anti-Semitic users he compiles have been deactivated in one way or another (which he notes), validating HuffPo’s claim that it seeks to stop these abusers. Still, there’s enough here to raise concerns that the system ain’t exactly working.
Here’s Huff-Watch’s intro, and here’s the full report.
UPDATE: Huff-Watch points out to me that he has accumulated quotes from Arianna Huffington suggesting that it is, in fact, policy to pre-moderate comments on news items. (At this separate link.) Huffington’s comments are in section 7 of the link (as I suggested, this research is thorough.) Scroll down to section 8 and he shows clear evidence that a news item about the Gaza war was being pre-moderated (hundreds of comments are pending); yet, immediately below the comments count (you have to click on the screen grab, but let me do it for you here) is a comment that is at least grossly offensive if not anti-Semitic, comparing Israel’s actions to the Nazi invasion of Poland.
— In this December post, I linked to an intriguing report in Intelligence Report, the publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center, about President George W. Bush’s decision in 2005 to appoint Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, a historian and Polish hypernationalist who has downplayed the postwar attacks on Polish Jews, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council. It made no sense; it still doesn’t, but the Washington Jewish Week’s redoubtable Richard Greenberg uncovers some fascinating nuggets in his fruitless effort to solve this bafflement:
Polish-born historian, sociologist and author Jan Gross, who has written extensively on Polish complicity in the killing of Jews, said that when he learned of Chodakiewicz’s appointment, he was prepared to lodge an official protest along with nearly a dozen other historians.
But a council member informed the group that such an action would be futile, he reported. "We were told, ‘This is a done deal,’ " Gross recalled, declining to name the council member who gave that advice. "If we protested, it wouldn’t do any good."
Curiouser and curiouser.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
