Gahr's description of Weyrich conjures images of Buford Furrow, the crazed bigot who launched a military assault on a Jewish children's center in California a few years ago. But Edsall and everyone who knows Paul Weyrich, also knows that this is a preposterous lie. Evan Gahr knows this as well, since he conceded in a subsequent e-mail to me: "I know full well that Weyrich has never advocated, suggested or implied that anybody should harm Jews."

For this reason, we have informed Gahr that his columns are no longer welcome in FrontPage magazine, and that he owes Weyrich an apology. Thomas Edsall and the Washington Post owe him one, too.

One thing that is almost certain is that this is not going to be the end of the story. There will be other attacks on Weyrich over this, and the stigma so liberally applied by Gahr and Edsall will certainly linger, perhaps indefinitely. Many people are impressed by labels, and Weyrich's enemies will surely exploit this fact. I fully expect, moreover, that there will be attacks on FrontPage for defending Weyrich.

His offense was a single phrase in an Easter commentary, which he wrote in his capacity as a Melkite Greek Catholic deacon for the Free Congress Web site:

Our God could not bear to see mankind suffering, even if it was from the consequences of his own actions, so He sent his only Son to become man so that man could become like God. To accomplish that, Christ was crucified by the Jews who had wanted a temporal ruler to rescue them from the oppressive Roman authorities. Instead God sent them a spiritual leader to rescue them from their sins and despite the fact that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, performed incredible miracles, even raised people from the dead, He was not what the Jews had expected so they considered Him a threat. Thus He was put to death.

To say, even in passing, that "the Jews killed Christ," (or in this case words to that effect) is regarded as politically offensive and, therefore, politically incorrect. Not merely because the Romans performed the actual deed (although the Jews may have demanded it), but because this sentence has been a staple of anti-Semites for centuries -- as the writer Daniel Goldhagen has shown, particularly among German anti-Semites. A large number of Jews have died because of it. Popes have dissociated the Catholic Church from it, out of guilt for the persecutions Catholics and other Christians have inflicted, and because -- in the wake of the Holocaust -- Jews demanded that they do so.

On the other hand the statement somewhat clumsily (and inaccurately) constructed by Weyrich is also a reasonable interpretation of the history of the crucifixion told in the Gospels. In other words, this is what the Christian Bible says. Should Weyrich, a Christian, ignore that fact? Yet, it is the only evidence Gahr has produced to justify stigmatizing Weyrich and ranking him with ordinary Nazis as a Jew-hater. Mightn't this be considered a little excessive? Like labeling someone a witch in 17th century Salem?

Yet, once an appropriate victim is selected, look how easy it is to get away with such persecution in 21st century Washington. Thomas Edsall, a political enemy of Weyrich who regularly looks the other way when racial or religious abuse spews from the mouths of the left, was apparently able to persuade his Washington Post editor that a sentence fragment, buried in an Easter letter and substantiated by no other evidence of hostile intentions towards Jews was actually "news."

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