MoveOn’s problem

In recent weeks, since drawing criticism for anti-Semitism on MoveOn.org’s Action Forum, the parent political organization has been finding a way to retreat without claiming responsibility for the thoughts and statements of its followers.

First, MoveOn.org decided to suspend the site’s operation until after the election to give the organization what it termed “a margin of safety.” When that looked too political, it restarted the site with a pledge to delay all postings by a day.

MoveOn’s political action director Eli Pariser insists that the organization knew nothing about the comments until they found out about them around Aug. 14.

Nice try. MoveOn itself notes it has full-time monitors who “spend the vast majority of their time looking for comments to pass on to the MoveOn team and doing weekly forum summaries.”

Mr. Pariser’s letter to the Anti-Defamation League claims MoveOn members “rose to sharply criticize the hate speech that was posted — even before it was brought to our attention.” But MoveOn monitors deleted criticisms from Bill Levinson of Israpundit.com well before it deleted anti-Semitic rants. Meanwhile, a post claiming “Jews control all the media” was made on Aug. 17, which is after MoveOn claims it “discovered” the problem.

Mr. Pariser tried to blame the comments “on a right-wing campaign to target the organization.”An Aug. 29 Op-Ed demonstrated that the forum’s anti-Semitism was just an extreme expression of what the most powerful radical-left political organization — one that gives money and support to Democrat candidates — really thinks and feels. Suggesting President Bush’s fight against terror is largely the result of excessive Jewish influence over Congress and the media is anti-Semitic. Asserting that Jewish policy-makers and Zionists in the Bush administration had a secret plan to invade Iraq and conquer the Middle East — a plan pushed by the all-powerful “Israel lobby” — is anti-Semitic.

MoveOn’s followers made that case time again, referring to “greedy Jewish pigs” and “Zionazis” in the process. And when a 2003 MoveOn position paper claims that Bush foreign policy advisers who supported the invasion of Iraq have “dual loyalties,” making policy decisions in the interests of Israel as much as the United States, it says the same thing with less colorful language.

Judging by its actions in the wake of this scandal and the tone of the paper, we can say with “a margin of safety” that MoveOn still has a Jewish problem. So do the candidates who fail to renounce the support MoveOn is giving them.