(Continued from p.7)
accompanied by two uniformed private police, and the three of them proceeded to escort WCBM to the hotel door."Kinsolving describes calling the Hilton to protest the hotel's permitting accredited reporters being thrown out of the hotel's lobby and being told his quarrel was with Hadassah and not the hotel. Kinsolving concludes his radio commentary by noting that as he was thrown out of the hotel by Hadassah's "police" he "recalled that Broadway and Hollywood hit of the 1920s 'What Price Glory' and thought 'Hadassah, What Price Hillary.'"
There have been some comic spin-offs from the affair. Feder led off his July 14 Boston Herald column with a sentence that coupled the Zionist Organization of America with Americans for a Safe Israel as opponents of the award to Hillary. In fact, the ZOA had stayed out of the controversy and the entire credit belonged to AFSI. The ADL (once known for its careful research!) made no attempt to ascertain the facts and at its director Abe Foxman's insistence fired off a
![[PHOTO]](burn.jpg)
AFSI leaders Helen Freedman and Charlie Bernhaut, along with scores of AFSI and Hadassah members, burn an enlarged replica of a Hadssah Life Membership card to protest Hadassah's award to Hillary Clinton. Photo by Israel Dear.
The entire episode enforces the wisdom of so cial critic Irving Kristol. In a wide ranging interview (Kristol was in Israel to give the inaugural Zalman C. Bernstein lecture sponsored by the Shalem Center,) the Jerusalem Post Magazine of June 25 quotes Kristol as advocating the abolition of all secular Jewish organizations, and singling out Hadassah as an especially telling example. He notes that Hadassah is absorbed in the fight for abortion, "which is crazy, since next to Mormons, Jews have the lowest abortion rate of any group in the United States. It's not an issue in the Jewish community. Jewish girls are very smart, they use contraceptives, they don't get pregnant, most of them. For Hadassah this was a major issue, and they insist that women should have the right to have an abortion whenever--ninth month, that shouldn't matter. The case is arguable, but what's Hadassah got to do with it? Is pro-abortion a Jewish issue? I don't see why. Better Hadassah shouldn't exist. Israel can get along without the money."
Like almost all the secular Jewish organizations, Hadassah advocates causes and issues that are not only irrelevant to Jewish concerns, but actively undermine the position of Jews both in the United States and in Israel (e.g. group quotas, the so-called peace process). Some of its funds are now siphoned into the worst PC excrescences. For example, Hadassah has given $1.2 million to the Brandeis Women's Center, predictably a fount of radical feminist absurdities. In 1997, it chose Phyllis Chesler as the first scholar of its International Research Institute on Women. Chesler is author of what is surely one of the silliest books ever published anywhere. The thesis of her Women and Madness is that the major mental illnesses are caused by male oppression. (Never mind that men are just as likely to suffer from schizophrenia and manic-depression, the major mental illnesses, and that the evidence is overwhelming that these are diseases of the brain.) It strains credulity that Hadassah women should struggle in their local communities to raise funds for such burlesque imbecilities!
Outpost - 8 - July-August 1999