Addressing a bevy of protesters at the opening of the Met's revival of terror-sympathizing opera "The Death of Klinghoffer", former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey brilliantly eviscerated the Met's advertising tagline "See It, Then Decide":
"When something is a cesspool, you don’t need to swim in it yourself to decide what it is."
Similarly, when my New Yorker arrived and I noticed that the latest offering from David Remnick entitled "Israel's New Intolerance", I didn't need to read it to know it was of a piece with his usual penchant for bashing the Jewish state, and, I was able to back up my assertion by questioning his entire premise in the following letter I sent to the New Yorker editors [my hunch is it won't be published]:
"Mr. Remnick might want to familiarize himself with the plethora of officially-sanctioned Judeophobic PA media propaganda publicly available for viewing on palwatch.org before suggesting that there is any moral equivalency between Israel and her declared mortal enemies with whom she is forced to negotiate with for the most trivial of political concerns, not least because while Israel attempts to grapple with "minority issues" even if they occasionally fail to resolve them to everyone's satisfaction resulting in excoriations from the likes of Mr. Remnick for her failures, her counterparts simply deny that "Jews" [again--"Jews", not "Israelis"] are deserving of any rights, if they deserve to exist at all, and are afforded free passes from Mr. Remnick and his ilk . Whether the author neglected to research the existence of streams of genocidal imprecations from the PA [never mind Hamas] and therefore exhibited journalistic incompetence, or was aware of said propaganda yet chose to ignore it and therefore exhibited moral Lilliputianism of the lowest sort is an open question. But it matters little: in either case it reflects poorly on the author and his editors."
Interestingly, someone must have made some headway with said editors, as the print headline "Israel's New Intolerance" became the web headline "Israel's One-State Reality". With apologies to Bob Uecker, just a weeeeee bit less incendiary.
[It was pointed out to me on the facebook thread where I posted this letter than the opening sentence may run-on. I admitted the possibility, and mused that some article headlines just make me "mouth-frothy".]
Then there was the news that a proposed law to declare Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people was being shelved becauze Tzipi Livni had concerns about a conflict between "preservation of Israel's Jewish character [and] democratic values". Someone should have pointed out to her that, aside giving credence to the canard that such values ipso facto conflict, she should ask the various European nations that employ various versions of "leges sanguinis", or "provid[ing] immigration privileges to individuals with ethnic ties" if they suffer any such conflicts. Twenty-five countries [including Israel] have some version of the law. Most are democracies. But none other than Israel has their national rights scrutinized.
What's that called kiddies? Don't answer all at once.
Finally, let Rabbi Shmuley tell what happened when attempts were made to get Jewish groups at NYU to sign on to promote a panel refuting Palestinian genocide libels at Cooper Union:
"Unexpectedly, we met even more opposition from Jewish groups on campus than from Palestinian ones. Jewish groups would not send the simple ad to their mailing lists...[] one student leader told me exactly how he felt. 'Israel is political. Our job is to create a Jewish environment for the students and bring them closer to tradition. Why would I risk being divisive by standing up for Israel? We stay away from politics.'
"Another student leader told me, 'We have excellent relationships with Arab and Palestinian students here. Associating ourselves with your event will elicit the ire of the Palestinian students and put us in their crosshairs. Why do we need that?' [] ...
"NYU has more Jewish students than any other private university in America, but we had to fight with Jewish organizations to promote Elie Wiesel! ... [T]he non-Jewish mainstream and political organizations [] were only too honored to host Elie Wiesel, and helped to fill the hall to capacity. Cooper Union sent a mailing to every student...
"Jewish organizational leaders are afraid of being “divisive,” of being marginalized as defenders of an unpopular regime, and of being accused of defending human rights abuses. In their fear, they cede the campus to anti-Israel activists."
The Quadrangle is now Occupied Territory, bordered on one side by Useful Idiocy and on the other by Outright Quislingery.
