When I was a kid, we didn’t drink Welch’s Grape Juice, didn’t eat Welch’s grape jelly. Any Welch product. That’s because Robert Welch was one of the founders of the John Birch Society, which my family saw as anti-semitic. Probably was for all I know. But that’s why we couldn’t have Welch’s. And I approve. I wonder how my mom knew that. Maybe from the liberal press, such as it was.
Well today George Will writes a whole column about Sheldon Adelson in the Washington Post, third richest man in America, and it is entirely about his business activities. Not a word about his political activity: the biggest backer of birthright, the turn-them-into-Zionists-and-get-them-to-marry-Jews free trips to Israel; a big backer of the Israeli right; and most important, a giant backer of Freedom’s Watch, the pro-Iraq-war group started after meetings at the Republican Jewish Coalition.
One of the great failures of American journalism has been its failure to out extremists, including Jews who are undermining the peace process, which I thought was U.S. policy. Adelson is said by Haaretz to be close to Netanyahu. I believe his thinktank in Israel is headed by Sharansky. Shouldn’t the Washington Post be reporting on this? Forty years ago my family got the news. Today there is none.
P.S. Larry Zuckerman tells me I’m wrong, that Welch of the John Birch Society manufactured candy not Welch’s grape juice. There goes a beautiful analogy! The point holds.
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How can you refer to jewish as a race. It’s not a race of people.
The John Birch Society is proud of its Jewish members. It is not and never was anti-Semitic. Yes, Robert Welch had nothing to do with the company that makes grape juice and jelly. He was vice-president in charge of sales and marketing for the James Welch Candy Company. He invented the Welch’s Fudge Bar, the Sugar Daddy and Sugar Babies.
Prior to forming The John Birch Society, he cut all ties to the company. His brother James sold the company to Nabisco a few years later.
Visit our web site JBS.org