YOUNG NAZIS, OLD NAZIS, FEEL ALRIGHT ON A WARM UBER ALLES NIGHT

This past week marked the 22nd anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's
memorable but unsettling visit to the Bitburg Cemetery in West Germany
to honor war dead from the German Army of WWII. In this burial ground,
there lay 49 members of the SS and many around the world didn't feel
they deserved all that much honor. Elie Weisel, a Nazi death camp
survivor among many others, implored Reagan not to pay homage to these
notorious waffen SS troops, but despite the legendary warm smile,
President Reagan had a rather cold agenda and layed a wreath where the
soldiers were interred. The qualifier by the Reagan administration (in
the tradition of complete sentences in lieu of complete truths) was
that many of the soldiers at Bitburg were young; not that the SS
officers were.



I've never argued with conservative thinking Jews involving the
political right's commitment to Israel, although the only president to
threaten Israel with withholding aid was a Republican. My problem is
that so many Republican I've heard, and I've known, may not seem
anti-Semitic, and they may not act anti-Semitic, but they so
comfortably seem to tolerate that which is anti-Semitic. And on that
matter, I add some personal perspective: when Jesse Jackson uttered his
infamous description of NYC as "Hymie Town"; more than one black friend
apologized to me as a Jew, and said Mr. Jackson certainly did not speak
for them. No supporter of Mr. Reagan with whom I'm acquainted, and
there are many, has ever modified their conservatism with any such
compassion, to this day.