Politics

Jewish Mag May Dump Coulter Column Over Tweets

FALLOUT

The editor of a conservative Jewish publication says he’s always defended the right-wing firebrand—until now.

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Matt McClain/ The Washington Post via Getty

Ann Coulter may have just screwed up her relationship with the conservative Jewish publication that has run her column for years.

The controversy-hungry columnist and author is still facing fallout for her barrage of tweets during the recent GOP debate, which many interpreted as blatantly anti-Semitic. “How many f---ing Jews do these [candidates] think there are in the United States?” she tweeted Wednesday night, complaining about the frequency of pro-Israel remarks. “It's not about Jewish people; it's about Republican panderers,” she continued.

Naturally, outrage ensued. “I’m accusing Republicans of thinking the Jews have so much power,” Coulter said, defending her comments to The Daily Beast on Thursday. “They’re the ones who are comedically acting out this play where Jews control everything.”

But the founder of Jewish World Review, an online magazine that publishes Coulter’s syndicated column, isn’t buying her excuse.

“She could have been drunk, she could have been high, I don't know, I have to give her the benefit of the doubt…but I don't have to delude myself,” Binyamin Jolkovsky, who has served as the publication’s editor-in-chief for nearly 18 years, told The Daily Beast. “Pandering to Jewish money is about as anti-Semitic a stereotype as you could put forth. Her ‘eff-ing Jews’ comment is not identifying Israel—it’s identifying Jews, plural, and all Jews. There is no excuse for that. You can't just wiggle out of something that vile and hateful.”

Coulter’s work has been appearing on Jewish World Review since at least January 2000. The day after Coulter’s now-infamous tweet, Jolkovsky’s website posted a new Coulter “insight” titled, “Donald Trump: The only people who like him are the voters.” Later that day, an editor’s note was added to her op-ed reading, “This column was prepared before the author’s anti-Semitic rant. JWR reached out to her and awaits her reply.”

So far, Jolkovsky says, it’s been radio silence.

“I have not heard back from her yet, no,” Jolkovsky said. “I called the syndicate, and initially they asked me to speak to her copy editor, and they said—I’m not making this up—that her copy editor will explain to me why she did what she did. I was like, I don’t think so.”

Jolkovsky, who is an Orthodox Jew and Republican voter, says that he has long maintained a personal working relationship with Coulter, and that this is the first time she has not emailed him back in a timely manner.

“It’s like when you have a friend and then the friend totally disses you, [even though] you’ve always been there for that friend,” he said. “It hurts.”

When asked if he is considering pulling Coulter’s column from his site, Jolkovsky said he hasn’t made a decision yet, but that “there are a lot of readers who want that to happen.”

“Let’s take Dana Milbank at The Washington Post, and imagine he wrote, ‘eff-ing blacks,’ you don’t think The Washington Post wouldn’t fire him on the spot?” he offered as an analogy. “It boggles the mind…I am hoping that she’s finished her tantrum and that she honestly understands what she’s done.”

This isn’t Coulter’s first incendiary public statement regarding Jews or Judaism. She famously told Donny Deutsch in 2007 that Jews should convert to Christianity because Jews should be “perfected.”

Jolkovsky has defended Coulter on that point, saying, “I honestly believe that a person of a certain faith has a right to believe their faith is the best.” But, for Jolkovsky, her tweets crossed his line.

“This is not an attack on the conservative movement or Evangelical Christians, this is about a girl who threw a tantrum…on Twitter,” he said. “Having an apology that’s acceptable, especially during this time of the year for the Jewish calendar, would be the right thing to do—it would be the Jewish thing to do. This is crazy.”

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