Activities
He was a financial backer of the author Conde McGinley, publisher of the periodical Common Sense. In the 1955 libel trial by Rabbi Joachim Prinz against McGinley, Freedman testified that "he had given Mr. McGinley financial support of 'more than $10,000 but less than $100,000'". Prinz had sued McGinley for calling him a "red rabbi."
At the Henry George School, Benjamin Freedman spoke on "The Genesis of Middle East Tensions". Long John Nebel reported on WNBC that Freedman would discuss anti-Semitism. Freedman was politically active until the mid-1970s when he was well over 85 years old. He died in May 1984 at the age of 94.
Freedman opposed the nomination of Anna M. Rosenberg to be Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1950. An article in the ADL Bulletin entitled The Plot Against Ann Rosenberg attributed the attacks on Rosenberg's loyalty to "professional anti-Semites and lunatic nationalists," including the "Jew-baiting cabal of John Rankin, Benjamin Freedman, and Gerald Smith."
Freedman, an apostate Jew, was well known to the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee as an active supporter of the Arab cause in the Middle East. (fn 33) In the course of his erratic and often contradictory testimony before the Senate committee, Freedman revealed the roles played by anti-Semitic agitators and right-wing anticommunists — including Gerald L.K. Smith, Conde McGinley, the "Reverend" Wesley Swift, Congressman John Rankin, Senator Joseph McCarthy, and J.B. Matthews — in the campaign against the Rosenberg appointment. (fn 34)
He is mentioned in a report by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin H. Freedman
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
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