Tuesday, May 11, 2010

English Anti-Semitism

This book review equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, which has the effect of making Israel above reproach. In the process, the book he reviews reviles some of the greatest writers in English -- Shakespeare, Dickens, and T.S. Eliot. If you are not Jewish, it's a stretch. What Jews need to do is clean up their act -- quit persecuting Palestinians, deal honestly in commercial matters, etc. It doesn't help that so many of the people involved in the latest financial meltdown were Jews. By no means all of them were. In Europe there was criticism of the Anglo-Saxon way of doing business, but in America there were a disproportionate percentage of prominent Jews, from Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to Lloyd Blankfein and John Paulson, among many others.

So the idea is that Jews can do anything, and if you criticize them, you are anti-Semitic. And if things get testy, there's always the cry of "Holocaust!" I don't buy it. Israel and the Jews need to get their house in order.

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