Washington Bureau

05/19/04 "The State" -- WASHINGTON — In the face of charges of anti-Semitism, U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings on Tuesday defended a newspaper column he wrote alleging President Bush went to war in Iraq to defend Israel and please American Jews.

Hollings declined a request for an interview Tuesday, but he released a letter defending his comments and calling “ridiculous” any criticism of them as anti-Semitic.

One S.C. Jewish leader was “horrified” by Hollings’ writings. The nation’s most prominent Jewish civil rights organization called on Hollings to renounce his charges.

“The whole foreign policy of the United States is based on Israel? What kind of ridiculous statement is that?” said Rabbi Philip Silverstein of Columbia’s Beth Shalom synagogue. “It makes him anti-Israel. It’s anti-Semitic ... it’s dangerous.”

Throughout his 38-year Senate career, Hollings, a Charleston Democrat, has apologized for remarks that have been decried as callous toward Jews, blacks, Japanese and other groups.

In the column, published this month in The State and two other S.C. newspapers, Hollings wrote that Israeli officials had known there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel.”

He also wrote that Bush “came to office with one thought — re-election. Bush felt tax cuts would hold his crowd together, and spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats.”

Hollings also named three people as particularly responsible for Bush’s zeal to invade Iraq — Richard Perle, the former chairman of a board that advises Pentagon leaders; assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. All are Jewish.

Abraham Foxman, president of The Anti-Defamation League, urged Hollings to renounce his latest comments.

“This is reminiscent of age-old, anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government,” Foxman wrote in a letter to Hollings.

Foxman said he knows some will dismiss Hollings’ choice of words as simply Hollings being Hollings.

“To them we say one doesn’t take bigotry in stride,” Foxman said. “He is one out of 100 (senators). These are 100 of the most prominent people in the country. To hear such crudeness, such ugliness, such classical anti-Semitism. It’s sad.”

In place of a statement, Hollings’ staff made available a letter to a constituent — whom they would not identify — who had written to Hollings to take issue with his column.

“It is my experienced opinion from supporting Israel here in the Senate for almost 38 years, that diplomacy and negotiation is the route we should take, not the military,” Hollings wrote. “I could cite numerous quotes to support my mentioning Perle, Wolfowitz and Krauthammer and otherwise give quotes of distinguished leaders of the State of Israel that support my position.”

Hollings wrote that calling his opinion “anti-Jewish stereotyping or scapegoating is ridiculous.”

U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint, R-Greenville, wrote a letter, that was published in The State, after he read Hollings’ piece. DeMint called the column “bizarre and, at worst, chilling.”

DeMint is seeking the GOP nomination for the Senate seat from which Hollings will retire next year.

DeMint said Tuesday he has refrained from criticizing Hollings but felt he had to respond because Hollings had so mischaracterized the president’s decision to go to war.

“I don’t know how anyone sitting in all those briefings for all those years could possibly bring it down to the motive for going into Iraq having anything to do with a focus on our friendship with Israel,” DeMint said. “It’s something Congress voted heavily in favor of doing.”

Hollings voted in 2002 to give Bush permission to attack Iraq but later said he was misled and that the war is a mistake comparable to American action in Vietnam.

Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com

* * * * * * *

(Portions about Sen. Hollings article attached below )

From: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Check.asp?idArticle=4121&r=tulmp

Senator Hollings, Air America, and more.

5/22/2004, Volume 009, Issue 36

Some of His Best Friends

Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings recently published a guest column in the Charleston Post and Courier in which he complained that the true purpose of President Bush's Iraq policy was to "secure Israel" and "take the Jewish vote from the Democrats." Various people are rather upset with Hollings as a consequence; Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham H. Foxman says the senator's op-ed argument is "reminiscent of age-old, anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate the government." But Sen. Hollings angrily rejects any suggestion that he is anti-Semitic--and, in fact, he himself is now demanding an apology from those who've made that suggestion most forcefully.

You know all this already, of course; it has been widely reported in the media. But THE SCRAPBOOK will say it straight out: The media have not treated Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings of South Carolina fairly, here.

Genuinely fair coverage of the controversy would have gone into much greater detail about exactly how anti-Semitic Sen. Hollings's arguments truly are.

For instance: Consider the extended--and extraordinary--defense of himself Hollings made on the Senate floor last Thursday. In the course of which he (a) groused that "you cannot have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here"; (b) insisted on the "legitimacy" of his notorious reference to the late Howard Metzenbaum as the "senator from B'nai B'rith"; and (c) revealed that just "the other day" he'd asked his staffers how they supposed they'd react were the Israeli army to bulldoze their families' ...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------