Antisemitism
Three dangerous ideas
1. Torture is justified, or can be called something other than torture. Read Mark Danner’s essential NYT op-ed. 2. Antisemitism is “understandable.” So says British moviemaker Ken Loach. Does he believe that going out and harassing Muslims after a terror attack is “understandable”? I very much doubt it. 3. One-party dictatorships have rights; civilians who raise grievances against them do
Atzmon PS
From another adulatory interview, this one by Martin Gibson in New Zealand’s Gisborne Herald (via Harry’s): There have been numerous attempts to silence Mr Atzmon, including inevitable charges that he is anti-Semitic, although he is Jewish himself. (Gibson fails to document one single such attempt to silence Atzmon.) Here is Atzmon, from the same interview: “One of the things that happened to
Airbrushing racism
[Cross-posted at Z Word and Harry’s Place.] Can you imagine a journalist for a liberal newspaper referring in neutral, even vaguely congratulatory terms to an artist’s “provocatively anti-gay rhetoric,” or “provocatively anti-black rhetoric,” or “provocatively anti-Arab rhetoric”? Well, have a look at John Lewis’s profile of Gilad Atzmon for the Guardian, in which we read about the saxophonist’s “provocatively anti-Jewish
“Criticism”
The NY Times reports that Caryl Churchill’s short play “Seven Jewish Children” might be headed from London to New York, thanks to the New York Theater Workshop — all but assuring a repeat of the “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” controversy. I haven’t seen Churchill’s play, but apparently Howard Jacobson has: Quite simply, in this wantonly inflammatory piece, the Jews drop
The day in Nazism
— From the NY Times, it has come to light that the hunted Nazi war criminal Aribert Heim was living under an alias in Cairo until his death in 1992. The piece of scum died slowly and painfully, thank goodness. He was “accused of performing operations on prisoners without anesthesia; removing organs from healthy inmates, then leaving them to die
Erdogan unhinged
Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey has lashed out at Israel’s Shimon Peres on a panel at Davos. During his tirade, Erdogan cited the supposedly authoritative views of Gilad Atzmon, a UK-based jazz saxophonist and political loudmouth, whose foul antisemitic writings I’ve noted on this blog many times. And to think that Turkey was jealously guarding its role as a possible
Benedict’s poison
We already knew that there’s a place of honor in the contemporary Catholic Church for serial child molesters. Now, by reinstating Richard Williamson as a bishop, Pope Benedict XVI has made clear that Holocaust denial is also welcome. According to the NY Times, Williamson just last week “said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi
Amateur hour at Tikkun
Tikkun magazine, for which I interned in the early ’90s, has published an article by the pseudonymous Israel Shamir, a notorious antisemite and arguably a neo-Nazi. The subject is terrorism, Israel and Palestine. This is sad, because Tikkun originated as a sane voice on the left, dedicated to getting beyond crude and demagogic thinking on the Middle East. Now they