Antisemitism
Gilad Atzmon to play music, foment hate in New York
In my inbox is a notice from World Village-Harmonia Mundi: Saxophonist Gilad Atzmon “makes a rare appearance in New York City beginning May 5th and is available for interviews.” Oddly I see no gig schedule listed. In any case I won’t be interviewing Atzmon during his visit, because I’m too busy interviewing musicians who don’t claim that the Jews provoked
Viva Palestina’s bigotry
Much attention is focused on Tony Blair as he testifies before the Iraq Inquiry, but I want to say a quick word about Blair’s sister-in-law, Lauren Booth. A recent convert to Islam, Booth is someone whose politics, like George Galloway’s and Cynthia McKinney’s and Gilad Atzmon’s, can only be properly described as far-right — although all these individuals and their
Assange and Shamir, continued
Following up my previous post on Julian Assange’s ties to Holocaust denier and antisemite Israel Shamir: this.
Assange and Shamir
I think it’s safe to say that political activists who compare themselves to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ought to be regarded with a high degree of skepticism. Alas, many on the left regard Julian Assange of WikiLeaks the way he views himself. Katha Pollitt of The Nation has written this very eloquent piece about the belittling of Assange’s rape charges.
Oliver Stone’s theory
“Jewish domination of the media.” I didn’t think my opinion of this huckster could sink any lower. Comments from Norm Geras, Judeosphere, Z Word, Modernity Blog. Stone has issued an apology. Translation: he’s sorry for revealing to an interviewer that he’s essentially a far rightist, an apologist for dictators, a man without a shred of moral comprehension, an ignoramus who
No place for racists?
As much as I applaud the NAACP for calling out rampant racism within the Tea Party movement, the problem is this. The NAACP’s rhetorical strategy is a delicate one; they don’t want to alienate masses of blue-collar whites who might be drawn to the Tea Party’s brand of (I would argue phony) libertarianism. So the NAACP instead insists that the
Socialist Worker on Atzmon: “The evidence for these serious charges is damning.”
Yes, it is. So it’s good to see the fringe lefties at Socialist Worker retract and apologize for publishing an interview with a Nazi sympathizer. The fact that they felt no need to vet Gilad Atzmon beforehand speaks volumes, however. “Critics of Israel,” no matter how virulent, have come to be given the benefit of the doubt on the radical
Mail bag
Just in case you thought the term “kike” went out of use in the ’50s: here is Ben C. Slocum, who signs off here from South Orange, New Jersey, and who wrote the following in my comments field: “Why all this hysteria over something as negligible as anti-Semitism. Jews are the richest and most privileged people in the world. Israel