Dec 15, 2006
—
Many reports of the recently concluded Holocaust-denial
conference in Iran highlighted the presence of several Jews clad in
classic Orthodox garb. The media’s understandable attraction to
arresting photographs and anomalous groups has led to an extraordinary
level of public misperception regarding this handful of participants,
who have made their way over the years to various events organized by
Jew-haters and unrelenting enemies of Israel.
To call these people a group is to stretch that term to its breaking
point and beyond. They are a few disturbed individuals. They represent
no one. Even Orthodox Jews who distance themselves from the ideology
of Zionism care deeply about the safety of Israel and are revolted by
these purported paragons of Orthodoxy. The time has come for the press
to ignore them, and if the canons of journalism render this impossible,
to depict them in the clearest terms as the utterly insignificant
figures that they are.