Single-minded Lawyers, open-minded Judges

Before being appointed to sit on the bench, a judge would have served as defense lawyer or prosecutor. As such, he or she would have been single-mindedly biased in favor of their client, be that a citizen or the state.

Of course, this level of dedication to the client does not give either counsel the right to take a stance so extreme as to (1) violate the rules for disclosing the evidence that one side may have but not the other; or (2) violate the rules that prohibit interference with the normal conduct of the case.

And when a lawyer is appointed to the bench to sit as judge, the rules of the game change. He or she must now approach every case with an open-mind. It means that judges are expected to remain absolutely impartial till all the evidence is in. Only then, do they render a decision in favor of one side or the other.

In a manner analogous to that, journalism is divided into two categories. There are those who report the news and are supposed to do so evenhandedly as if they were judges. And there are those whose job is to express opinions. These are the pundits who act like lawyers in that they defend one side of the argument; or act like prosecutors, in that they attack the opposite side. Most of the time, however, they do both simultaneously: build up one side while tearing down the other.

If we accept those views as being a reasonable and desirable code of conduct for both the legal profession and for journalism, we can begin to evaluate some of the things we see happen in today's journalism. To this end, we can study an article that came under the title: “Presidents damagingly politicized the Holocaust long before Sean Spicer,” written by Rabbi Avi Weiss and published on April 24, 2017 in the New York Daily News.

Though not a professional journalist, we may consider Weiss to be an advocate for the Jewish causes, therefore a player analogous to a lawyer dedicated to his client: the collective Jews. In choosing to prosecute former Presidents of the United States for “politicizing” the Holocaust, he names four Presidents he says were guilty of that sin. The first is Jimmy Carter, to whom he said in his face, he was outraged that he (Carter) sold warplanes to Saudi Arabia, then committed to building the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Weiss would have preferred to see the museum deal but not that of the warplanes.

He goes on to say he was also outraged at the late President Ronald Reagan because he did two things during a trip to Europe. He visited a concentration camp where the Jews were kept before being exterminated. And he visited a cemetery where Nazi soldiers were buried. Weiss would have preferred to see Reagan visit the concentration camp but not the Nazi cemetery.

And he was outraged at Bill Clinton for inviting Yasser Arafat to visit the Holocaust Memorial in Washington – an event that was superseded by a bigger event, causing its cancellation to the relief of some people including Rabbi Avi Weiss.

Finally, Weiss says he was outraged at Barack Obama for suggesting that Israel arose as a result of the Holocaust. He explains that such is the line that the Arabs are taking, and he doesn't like it.

He ends by saying: “We must applaud those who remember the Holocaust with honor, respect and fidelity, and call out those who don't.” Well, it is obvious that the Rabbi is old enough to remember who was the first to politicize the Holocaust. It was Abba Eban who, in 1967, accused Gama Abdel Nasser of being like Hitler in a speech he gave at the Security Council. He was booed by the attendees and never made that mistake again.

But despite all that, it is a glaring reality that literally tens of thousands of Jewish leaders and pundits have been politicizing the Holocaust for decades, and continue to do so with gusto. Heading the list is Benjamin Netanyahu that never gives a speech at the UN or any forum without milking the Holocaust for all he can draw from it. Maybe the good Rabbi should make a complete list of these leaders and pundits, and call them out as per his own suggestion.

He should do this because the sum total of what he has been saying amounts to pleading for future Presidents of the United States to do things for Israel, always Israel and no one but Israel. If it happens that they must conduct business with someone else and affect the Jews if only tangentially, the Presidents must not try to soften the effect because to do so makes it look like they are equating a Jewish cause with a gentile cause. And that's an absolute no-no in Jewish thinking.

Unfortunately, this is the virtual apartheid wall that the Jewish leaders are building around their followers to mimic the brick walls they used to build around the ghettos of olden times. The world is moving forward, and they are moving backward.