In search of anti-semitism: what Christians provoke what Jews? Why? By doing what? - And vice versa

It is a lengthy article (about nine thousand words), 1) describing every position taken by Buchanan over the recent past that has attracted the attention of the anti-anti-Semites, and 2) analyzing the reasons Buchanan has given, when he has given any, for taking such positions. Muravchik closed his long essay by making a point that can't be ignored in an inquiry seeking to explore personal motivations. He cites Buchanan's complaint that "'decent and honorable men, Left as well as Right, [have] had careers damaged and reputations smeared' by the accusation of anti-Semitism. Buchanan," Muravchik comments, "has not replied to my letters asking whom on the Left he had in mind, but in recent times public charges of anti-Semitism have been made in a sustained way against only two figures on the Left, Jesse Jackson and Gore Vidal. What can move Buchanan to such tenderness toward the likes of these two who, the Jewish question aside, represent everything he despises?"

Now Mr. Muravchik's point is in one way perplexing. If he is saying that Buchanan is dismayed by unfair attacks even on figures on the Left whom he dislikes or disapproves of, then he is paying Mr. Buchanan a compliment for deploring undeserved inferences even when at the expense of leftist victims, but clearly Muravchik was not intending to do so. If he is suggesting that the Right, rather than the Left, is more greatly disposed nowadays to anti-Semitic thought, I think he is wrong. Most probably, he is merely challenging Buchanan's bona fides.

In analyzing Buchanan's defenses, he brought up the singling out of four prominent Jewish geostrategists as distinctive in their support of George Bush's anti-Saddam Hussein program:

Buchanan tried to argue that his litany of those seeking war in the Gulf consisted of Jewish names merely because his debate was with the neoconservatives," many of whom are Jewish. But why is Buchanan spoiling for a fight with the neoconservatives? The alliance between them and traditional conservatives like him has been based largely on foreign policy, which he himself says is the most important of all issues. And although the collapse of Soviet power heralds a new era in foreign policy, Buchanan remains at one with many neoconservatives in believing that Communism--their common foe-is not yet finished. Is Buchanan attacking Jews, then, because they happen to be neoconservatives, or is he attacking neoconservatives because they happen to be Jews?

This is not an easy question for defenders of Pat Buchanan to handle, though he is hardly the only conservative who bitterly attacks neoconservatives without making it exactly clear why. And Muravchik is unanswerable on the particular point, namely that to the extent that one's interest is anti-communist foreign policy, the neoconservatives have been indispensable allies. But on to the closing paragraph in Muravchik's attack:

Both the New York Post editorialist and Jacob Weisberg in his article in The New Republic said that they did not want to get into a "semantic" squabble over "anti-Semitism," indeed there may be no authoritative definition of the term. [Correct: there is not, there never can be: but attempts at periodic clarification are not a wasted effort.] But when a man falsely maintains that he is the victim of a "pre-planned orchestrated smear campaign" by the Anti-Defamation League [see below: 1) not pre-planned, 2) not self-evidently a smear; on the other hand, 3) very definitely orchestrated]; when he is hostile to Israel; when he embraces the PLO despite being at adamant odds with its political philosophy; when he implies that Jews are trying to drag America into war for the sake of Israel [alone]; when he sprinkles his columns with taunting remarks about things Jewish; when he stirs the pot of intercommunal hostility; when he rallies to the defense of Nazi war criminals, not only those who protest their innocence but also those who confess their guilt; when he implies that the generally accepted interpretation of the Holocaust might be a serious exaggeration-when a man does all these things, surely it is reasonable to conclude that his actions make a fairly good match for [conventional anti-Semitism].