(JTA) — A Jewish group garnered 10,000 signatures on a petition asking Fox News Channel to fire political commentator Glenn Beck.
Jewish Funds for Justice attempted to deliver the petition on Jan. 13 to the Manhattan headquarters of News Corp., Fox’s parent company, run by Rupert Murdoch. Security would not allow the group’s president, Simon Greer, to enter the building, so he pledged to mail in the petition.
Jewish Funds for Justice has clashed with the talk show provocateur since last year, when Beck said the term "social justice" leads to Nazism. It launched the petition after Beck’s sustained attack on liberal financier George Soros in November in which Beck suggested without evidence that Soros, a Holocaust survivor, had collaborated with the Nazis.
Also Jan. 13, Beck suggested a shadowy attempt to control human thought. Jewish Funds for Justice and Media Matters, a liberal watchdog, noted that eight of the nine villains in Beck’s analysis, including Soros and Sigmund Freud, were Jewish.
"We are disturbed by his increasing focus on attacking Jews and find it hard to believe that it was only coincidence that eight of the nine individuals on his list alleging a shadowy alliance to control the Americans through propaganda were Jewish," Jewish Funds for Justice said in a statement.
A number of conservative Jewish groups have defended Beck, saying that there is no evidence that the attacks on Soros and others have anything to do with the targets’ Jewishness and noting Beck’s strong support for Israel.
