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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (461914)	9/19/2003 5:54:20 PM
From: Emile Vidrine	Respond to of 769670

[Shielding Jewish racism by screaming "Antisemitism!" has become institutionalized. It is a Jewish reflex action and the Jewish Thought Police are everywhere. ALWAYS try to decipher if a news author is Jewish. You're looking for bias, especially per Israel. You're looking for what's selectively stated -- and selectively hidden.] The right to voice strong views. An American newspaper recently labelled the Observer Judeophobic. It is not, by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Observer (UK) , September 14, 2003 "When Israel was born in 1948, David Ben Gurion said that the Jewish people had become 'like other nations'. That was the great dream of Zionism, intended by Theodor Herzl to 'answer the Jewish question', to 'normalise' the Jews so that they could become as obscure as the Danes or the Dutch; a nation like all others. The outcome is painfully clear every time you switch on the television or open a newspaper, where that tiny patch of territory called the Holy Land is covered at more length than all of Africa or India. So far from obscure, this Jewish state is surrounded by bitter argument and recrimination. Last week, the International Herald Tribune published an article by Barry Kosmin and Paul Iganski under the headline 'Crossing the line from criticism to bigotry'. The writers went further than the familiar accusation against western news media - even against the New York Times - of hostile bias towards Israel. They claimed that Judeophobia, 'hatred or fear of Jews', had 'infected elements of the British news media', and that The Observer was 'a serial offender when it comes to bigotry against Jews'. That is a very serious accusation indeed, and would be devastating if true. Several pieces were adduced as evidence. One was a verse by Tom Paulin, published in February 2001, describing the 'Zionist SS' killing 'little Palestinian boys', the other was a recent column by Richard Ingrams in which he said that when he saw letters in the paper about Israel his practice was 'to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it'. Personally, I thought both effusions grotesque (perhaps the most offensive word in Paulin's offering was 'poem'; has the Trades Descriptions Act no literary application?) and if either had been an expression of editorial policy, this paper would stand condemned. But there must be a presumption in favour of freedom of expression and variety of opinion, even if it's easier to suppress everything unseemly or outrageous in the interests of good taste, or a quiet life. An intemperate and vulgar press is always better than a licensed or self-censored press. The American journalist Michael Kinsley, a Jewish liberal, has said how much he admires the London papers (even Ingrams's Private Eye, with what Kosmin and Iganski call its long history 'of sarcasm and vitriol vis-a-vis the Jews') by comparison with journalism in the US, 'paralysed by gentility'. It is certainly arguable that reporters covering the conflict in the Holy Land hunt in a pack, just as they did in Ulster and the Balkans, as the self-appointed friends of Israel say (Israelis themselves, in my experience, are less thin-skinned, echoing the Millwall fans: 'Everybody hates us, we don't care.') But does The Observer have a tradition of 'bigotry against Jews'? Over the years this paper has been a by-word for supporting progressive causes, fighting racism, and employing Jewish writers (to the late Lady Pamela Berry, The Observer was 'a lot of central Europeans writing about a lot of central Africans') and for long it echoed the fondness once felt for Israel on the liberal Left. Twenty years ago when Conor Cruise O'Brien was editor-in-chief and a scintillating columnist, he used The Observer as a platform for his passionate Zionism. Everyone knows that the Left and Israel have fallen out of love, for reasons it would take a book to explain. But can the alienation of so many former emotional Zionists simply be ascribed to 'hatred or fear of Jews'? For Kosmin and Iganski, who have edited a book called A new Anti-Semitism?, it evidently can ... What Kosmin and Iganski call the new Judeophobia is indeed nothing like the anti-Semitism of the Anti-Dreyfusards. It is entirely to do with the Jewish state of which Herzl dreamt. It relates not to the causes of Zionism but to its consequences. That is the problem. If criticism of Israel, however brutal or unfair, is construed as anti-Semitism, then this must represent a grave failure for Zionism. No one cries 'racist' at the fiercest critics of Ireland or Pakistan. Why is Israel different? Other British Jews have talked of their pain and estrangement in the face of mounting hostility towards Israel ... Whatever else is said about Israel, it quite obviously is not a nation like all others, or these very controversies would not be taking place. And although Kosmin and Iganski may not realise it, they come close to confirming that old foreboding that a Jewish state would compromise the position of western Jews in their own countries."