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Friday, June 20, 2003
THE PARTY CONTINUES I wrote the following as a FrontPage column, but due to a variety of logistical foul-ups, the piece never got published. So, I'm now posting it to the blog instead. This was supposed to run on 6/19, the 50th anniversary of the Rosenberg execution: - - - - - TO MARK the 50th anniversary of the execution of atomic spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, a single event wouldn’t do. In the godless religion of leftist true believers, the Rosenberg anniversary is the highest of holy days, one demanding so much denial and historical revision that it takes at least two full nights to commemorate properly. In New York, the celebration began last night in the form of a concert at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on West 68 Street. There, sympathizers for the traitors who helped Stalin acquire the atomic bomb delighted in a Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus performance of Leonard Lehrman’s “We Are Innocent,” a cantata based on texts from the Rosenbergs’ letters. But the main event comes tonight, on the actual anniversary of the 1953 execution. At New York’s City Center, a veritable who’s who of the radical left will assemble for The Children of Resistance, a soiree to benefit the Rosenberg Fund for Children, an outfit headed up by the Rosenbergs’ son, Robert Meeropol (who took the last name of his adoptive parents after his own folks were put to death). The event includes such luminaries as Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte, Peter (sans Paul and Mary) Yarrow, and Pete Seeger. As if to prove that not all Marxists are retirees, the event also features some young up-and-comers in the hate-America movement. Chief among them is Mazi Jamal, the 25-year old son of convicted cop-killer Mumia. In 2000, the younger Jamal trekked to Cuba to celebrate the return of Elian Gonzalez to a life of slavery in Fidel Castro’s Workers’ Paradise. (“Viva Mumia! Viva Fidel! Viva La Revolution!,” Jamal shouted.) Jamal will be joined at the event by Suemyra Shah, a 19-year-old Berkeley student and member of Students for Justice in Palestine, which is demanding that the University of California divest from Israel. It should be a grand old time. For the Rosenbergs’ loyal supporters, the Party continues—no matter what the evidence says. Among serious people, any lingering doubts about the Rosenbergs’ guilt were laid to rest in 1995, with the declassification of the Venona papers. The documents contain transcriptions of cables between Moscow and its agents in Washington that the FBI managed to intercept and decode during and after World War II. Thanks to Venona, it’s now beyond dispute that the Communist Party USA, of which the Rosenbergs were members, was under Moscow’s direction. Moreover, Julius (code-name LIBERAL among his Soviet handlers) led a spy ring that furnished Moscow with information about various American weapons programs including ENORMOUS—the Manhattan Project. Ethel, the transcripts make clear, gladly aided her husband’s efforts. Today, even the most determined Rosenberg excuse-makers, including Meeropol, have stopped trying to argue that the couple was innocent. Instead, they quibble about the manner of the Rosenbergs’ convictions: They note that David Greenglass, Ethel’s brother and a key government witness, lied under oath to save his own skin. They insist that Julius gave only “non-atomic” secrets to the USSR—a bogus claim that downplays the severity of their betrayal, and one that, even if were true, wouldn’t mitigate their participation in a conspiracy to commit espionage, the crime for which they were convicted. Finally, Rosenberg supporters argue that whatever Julius’ culpability, Ethel was merely an accomplice to her husband’s crime, and undeserving of his fate. At the time, prosecutors thought as much, too, and only sought the death penalty against her in a shameless attempt to coerce confessions. Justice Department officials (wrongly) believed that the Rosenbergs would sooner betray Stalin than make their children orphans. Little did they know, the Communists’ loyalty to “Uncle Joe” was stronger than their commitment to their real family. The complaints aren’t without merit, but none changes the facts of the Rosenbergs’ crimes. Making the case for his parents in a recent Los Angels Times op-ed, Meeropol remarked that “a guilty man can receive an unfair trial,” which is true, but at the end of the day, he’s still a guilty man. And it’s not as though the Rosenbergs were guilty of some petty, trifling offense. They betrayed their country in the hopes of seeing it conquered and subjugated by Stalin’s USSR. By helping the Soviets acquire the bomb, they perpetuated the oppression of hundreds of millions of human beings, while putting the world at risk of nuclear holocaust. They voluntarily served a despot who systematically butchered tens of millions of people, people who, unlike the Rosenbergs, were truly innocent. Whatever faults might fairly be pinned on the Rosenbergs’ prosecutors, they pale in comparison to the Rosenberg’s very real, very wicked crimes. For 50 years, the Rosenbergs’ innocence has been an article of the faith among the hard-bound left, because to admit the truth about these two traitors would be to concede one much larger, more painful reality: Communism, like its various related social disorders, isn’t—nor has it ever been—a democratic effort in pursuit of “progressive” social change, but a plot to foment revolution in pursuit of dictatorship. The Rosenbergs weren’t idealists deprived of their civil liberties; they were ideologues who dreamed of destroying the very notion of civil liberties altogether. All the hand-wringing about alleged judicial improprieties in their case is an insincere ploy to elicit sympathy in the establishment press. After all, those who wailed most bitterly about the Rosenbergs’ “miscarriage of justice” a half-century ago were the same folks who had scarcely a word to say about Stalin’s show trials, let alone the Gulag. Mazi Jamal is living proof that the hypocrisy isn’t merely a relic of the past. When he went to Cuba three years ago, he denounced America as a nation that “murders those who would speak for the people,” while pumping his fist on behalf of the brazenly murderous, anti-democratic Castro regime.Tonight, he’ll be showered with applause by the self-styled pacifists at City Center. According to promotional materials, tonight’s event will “commemorate the Rosenbergs’ resistance.” Resistance to what? American freedoms and democracy. Fifty years later, radicals old and young come to celebrate the Rosenbergs’ “resistance,” because for them—the Venona Papers, the fall of Communism, and tens of millions of corpses notwithstanding—the Party continues. Monday, June 16, 2003
MUM ON GRAY This week's Daily News column looks at the sad case of Gov. Gray Davis: Not even his supporters are willing to defend him. |