Dershowitz: NBC’s McCarthyesque attack on John Bolton and the Gatestone Institute

WaEx – When I was growing up, organizations that expressed any views at all similar to those expressed by Communist groups were called “Communist fronts.” Anyone who defended on the grounds of civil liberties the right of communists to express their hateful ideology was labeled a “commie-symp.“

All decent people railed against this coerced, “politically correct” guilt by association because it endangered freedom of speech, freedom of association, basic fairness, and especially truth.

Today, a similar tactic of defamatory character assassination against people with whom one disagrees, particularly conservatives, is being employed by elements of the Left, including some in the mainstream media.

Consider the recent attack by Heidi Przybyla of NBC News against recently-appointed national security adviser John Bolton, and an organization whose board he chaired before that, the Gatestone Institute.

The headline of the hit piece is: “John Bolton chaired anti-Muslim think tank.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Przybyla wrongly called Gatestone an “anti-Muslim think tank” presumably because it published some articles about Muslim “no-go zones” in parts of Europe. The existence of certain areas in Europe that are unsafe for non-Muslims is widely debated as “politically incorrect” in the European media. It is well established that visible Jews, wearing Kippahs or other indicators of their religion, have been attacked. Two weeks ago, a non-Jew apparently trying to discredit such rumors by wearing a kippah was attacked on a Berlin street.

Others have been attacked as well. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a vocal supporter of mass migration, has commented on this troubling situation. According to the Daily Express, Merkel warned that, “There cannot be any no-go areas … where people are afraid to go, but such places are a reality.”

For some Gatestone writers to have participated in this debate does not make Gatestone “anti-Muslim.” It makes them pertinent.  MORE