We’ve documented CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman’s enthusiasm for serving as the PR person for the group of right-wing, pro-Trump rabbis known as the Coalition for Jewish Values. Chapman gave space to a nonsensical attack from the group in a Sept. 28 article which followed on the group’s Nazi smears of members of Congress like Rep. Rashida Tlaib who aren’t in lockstep with right-wing pro-Israel policies:
The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), which represents more than 1,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis, strongly criticized the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for not calling for consequences against antisemitic members of Congress, and instead attacking Fox News over illegal immigration.
[…]In a statement about ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt, the CJV President Rabbi Pesach Lerner said, “In January, Greenblatt correctly stated that Tlaib’s depiction of Israel as ‘apartheid’ was both ‘ restated that same false and antisemitic claim in order to demonize Israel’s self-defense, and joined her fellow ‘Squad’ members to strip funding from a program designed to neutralize the war crimes of the Hamas terror organization.”
“Greenblatt was right to say that this ‘ shameful act’ by ‘the Squad’ emboldens Hamas & Hezbollah, but why has he not called for consequences after yet another antisemitic fiasco from the ‘Squad?'” said Rabbi Lerner.
“Instead, he diverts our attention with another partisan fight against a conservative public figure who made controversial, debatable, but certainly not hateful remarks,” said the CJV in reference to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who has reported on Democrats’ using illegal immigrants to replace voters in the U.S.
In fact, Carlson’s pushing of “replacement theory” is quite hateful, since it comes from a basis of racism and white nationalism.But Chapman’s job here is PR, not reporting,so he continued:
In August, the CJV criticized the ADL for partnering with a Jewish college organization to combat antisemitism on campuses because, the CJV explained, the ADL “lacks the moral clarity to properly identify antisemitism, let alone combat it.”
An ADL spokesman wrongly claimed, according to the CJV, that “anti-Israel activism in and of itself is not antisemitism.”
Rabbi Moshe B. Parnes, the CJV Southern Regional Vice President, said, “Only someone with no sense of Jewish history could claim that BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] is not antisemitic.”
Actually, there’s plenty of debate over whether criticism of Israel equates to anti-Semitism, and there is arguably at least some criticism of the country’s policies that is clearly not.
And because Chapman is doing PR and not actual reporting, he couldn’t be bothered to contact the ADL for a response to the CJV’s hateful, ahistorical criticism.