The Conservative Cave

Jeff Jacoby: A libel as old as the Pyramids

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/04/jeff-jacoby-a-libel-as-old-as-the-pyramids.php

Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for the Boston Globe. Yesterday he sent out a column to his Arguable subscribers (of whom I am one). He he has now made the column accessible here (with numerous links) on his personal site.

The column hit home for me. Jeff has kindly granted us his permision to republish it on Power Line along with his best wishes for a safe and happy Passover to those of us who begin our celebration of the holiday tonight. ...

Quote

As Passover returns this week, Jews the world over will gather around the Seder table to recount, as they have each spring for 34 centuries, the great narrative of how God liberated their ancestors from slavery in Egypt and set them on their long journey through history. In the course of retelling the story, they will quote the passage from the first chapter of Exodus in which Pharaoh justified the unspeakable repression he intended to inflict on the Hebrews.

“Come, let us deal wisely with them,” he exhorted his nation. “Otherwise they may become so numerous that if there is a war they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the land.” Though the tyrant’s idea of dealing wisely with the Hebrews began with slave labor, ...

Pharaoh’s false accusation set the pattern for what became one of the history’s most durable antisemitic conspiracies. Down through the millennia Jews have been portrayed as a fifth column, malevolently disposed to betray the nations in which they live. Again and again, the libel resurfaces: When war comes, it will be the Jews who caused it, or who had the most to gain from its outcome, or who manipulated others into fighting and dying. The libel is as old as the Pyramids — and as current as today’s news.
...
Michael Oren, the distinguished historian who was Israel’s ambassador to Washington during the Obama administration, observed recently that the war against Iran has revived “the slanderous claim, from right and left, that Jews have dragged America into a futile war.” The ideological range of those promoting that accusation spans the spectrum. Oren quotes New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, podcaster Tucker Carlson, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and MAGA fanatic Candace Owens. He could have easily extended his list.

But this is only the most recent incarnation of Pharaoh’s logic.

The modern template was forged in the early 19th century, when propagandists began insisting that the Rothschild banking family had used secret foreknowledge to profit from the Napoleonic Wars — and that if Jews could profit from wars, Jews must engineer wars.

Henry Ford, who was both a brilliant industrialist and an obsessive pacifist, blamed Jews for World War I. “Ford attributes all evil to the Jews or Jewish capitalists,” his friend John Burroughs, a renowned naturalist, wrote in 1919. “The Jews caused the war; the Jews caused the outbreak of thieving and robbing all over the country, the Jews caused the inefficiency of the navy.” Ford bought a newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, to spread his vitriol. He ran articles with headlines like “Jewish Dictatorship of the United States during War” and claimed that while millions suffered, Jews had “found wealth in the debris of civilization.”

A minor quibble, this loyalty libel is not literally "as old as the Pyramids." The enslavement of the Israelites - and the Exodus - happened during Egypt's 18th Dynasty, which carved Pharaoh's tombs in what is now called the Valley of the Kings. There may be doctors for people who know this,  .

There is context to the enslaving Pharaoh's paranoia, a period of chaotic invasions and rule by the invaders that happened between the arrival of Israel in the 12th Dynasty and the reunification of Egypt at the start of the 18th Dynasty. I'm not justifying, just giving context.

While Jacoby's article focuses on 20th Century US, Hitler claimed Jews betrayed Germany in WW1, and the 1890s French Dreyfus Affair was an antisemitic false accusation that artillery Captain Alfred Dreyfus had betrayed secret weapons technology the the Germans. IOW, the loyalty libel is not peculiarly American, nor particularly modern.

Could he realistcally sue though? (Serious question, I don't know.)

Yes, the headline is misleading, but it's also written so that The Daily Beast can try to evade resposibilty for being misleading. They also admit in the article that the claims that were supported had nothing to do with Trump.

Our military is becoming a clownshow? After it has pulled off some of the cleanest, most impressive operations in recent memory?

Maybe the guys in the choppers were Obama/Biden loyalists spying on Kid Rock. The DUmmies would approve of that.

Coolgoober (329 posts)

Ya Know, I Was In The Military

And I might get yelled at for this, but it just seems like it's following in trump(sic) and hegseths(sic) footprints, and i(sic) becoming a clown show. Yeah I'm talking about the helicopter incident at kid rocks(sic) house. I was in the Marine Corps Airwing. Was(sic) their(sic) yahoo pilots? To be sure, of course there was(sic). But always with a little discipline to go with it.(sic) There are three reasons we are a military super power. Intelligence, the hardware, and the discipline. If we don't have the discipline, and I mean hegseth(sic) too, then our troops are in big trouble.

Somebody has trouble trying to compose correct English. That weak virtue-signal should have had at least a few DU-folks cringing.