Media Matters has already detailed how Glenn Beck uses anti-Semitic themes and imagery in his ongoing smear campaign against George Soros. But the massive, glaring irony of Beck's relentless Jew-baiting is that he practices it while also accusing Soros of being the one who's anti-Semitic. In last night's broadcast of his Fox News show, Beck falsely suggested Soros was a Nazi collaborator and described Soros as “an atheist who doesn't embrace his Jewish identity and rarely supports Jewish causes or Israel.” In fact, Beck said, “I'm probably more supportive of Israel and the Jews than George Soros is.”

Who cares? Well, Beck does. His implication is that anyone who's born a Jew but chooses not to practice the faith must be a self-hating anti-Semite. Beck wisely chose not to call Soros a self-hating Jew outright -- instead relying on insinuations -- but his official “TV Background Guide” on Soros includes a reference to Soros' professed lack of a connection with the Jewish community under the subhead “ANTI-SEMITISM,” as if the two go hand in hand. The document also makes much of Soros' name change from the “Jewish-sounding” Schwartz.

But none of this absolves Beck of his Jew-baiting. In fact, it compounds it. As Guardian columnist Antony Lerman wrote:

The Jewish self-hatred accusation assumes that there is a correct manner and degree to which people should express their Jewish identities in public; and that there is a particular set of core values and institutions which one should favour. Neither of these assumptions is justifiable on the basis of Jewish teachings or Jewish history. The accusation also assumes that Jewishness “is or should be a primary identity”, and therefore to reject it or criticise it is somehow unnatural and wrong.

Beck is setting himself up as the authority on what differentiates a good Jew from a bad Jew and using time-honored anti-Semitic tropes to depict those who he thinks falls into the latter category. In doing so, he places himself only one or two steps away from Tea Party Express' Mark Williams, who feels comfortable calling Jews who support Park 51, “Jewish Uncle Toms.”

Neither Beck nor Williams is defending Judaism. Instead, they're using it as a cudgel against those Jews who they happen to disagree with. How is that not anti-Semitic?