Huffington Post Demeans Orthodox Jews

Huffington Post Demeans Orthodox Jews

By Ben Shapiro 

On Wednesday, the Huffington Post – a website with a long history of questionable coverage of Jews – placed a story on its front page titled “Romney’s Motorcade Chased By Pack of Orthodox Jews.” The story was authored by resident anti-Israel Huffington Post editor Sam Stein.

The story itself quoted a press pool report discussing an incident in which the Romney motorcade drove near an Orthodox Jewish wedding, and nearby members of the crowd ran after the motorcade in an attempt to spot the Republican candidate. The press pool wrote:

[A]s we turned into Lake Terrace, the motorcade drove past an Orthodox Jewish wedding party that had been posing for pictures outside. Immediately, the family abandoned the bride and groom and began chasing Romney’s car in the parking lot, waving cameras. The candidate’s SUV drove around a corner to a back entrance, followed by at least 10 members of the wedding party who tried to run up to Romney’s car by were halted first, by a wood fence, which one man tried to scale, and then by Secret Service agents, who did not look pleased. “Oh you’re Secret Service,” one woman said, as she was asked by an agent to move back. “We just want to see Romney.”

This, it turned out, was inaccurate. The members of the crowd who chased the Romney motorcade weren’t members of the wedding party; they had been standing nearby as they posed for pictures. The members of the wedding confirmed that Romney later stopped by and posed with pictures with the wedding group. The groom’s mother explained:

She said the campaign had originally limited the wedding party to just two photos with Romney but said the GOP candidate lingered longer than expected. “We ended up taking many more, and we took videos,” she said. “He was very gracious. And we were all telling him we were happy that he came to our wedding because we are all very strong staunch supporters of his.”

In other words, this is a really sweet story. But from that headline, you’d assume that a roving gang of Hasidic thugs decided to descend on the Romney campaign en masse, maniacally wielding their tefillin and sadistically brandishing their talleisim.

It has long been a well-accepted rule of American politics that using the word “pack” to describe a group of people is questionable. Describing a group of young black men as a “pack” is considered racist. Describing non-violent Orthodox Jews expressing admiration for a presidential candidate as a “pack” demeans Jews.

Huffington Post itself recognized how egregious the headline was, and pulled it in favor of a less offensive version.

But again, this is nothing new from the Huffington Post, which simply can’t stand Orthodox Jews. On Rosh Hashana 2010, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, the Post ran an article titled, “Rosh Hashana: God’s Call to End Zealotry”; Ramadan, meanwhile, was covered with an innocuous story titled, “Muslims Go Green for Ramadan.” Huffington Post systematically buries stories about Muslim attacks on Jews in Israel, but gives top-line coverage to stories about Muslim deaths. Huffington Post has granted glowing coverage to virtually every report about Israeli “human rights abuses” over the past few years, but said almost nothing about terrorist attacks against Jews.

Huffington Post isn’t anti-Semitic. But they sure seem less than concerned about their language – and even less concerned than that about the treatment of Jews abroad. They’re endemic of a left that has decided that Jews must be treated with disdain in order to uphold the glories of “tolerance” for radical Muslims. And Orthodox Jewish support for Republicans only adds to their ire.


http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/huffington-post-demeans-orthodox-jews/