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With his slash-and-burn style, he described the United States as Israel’s “Shabbos goy… the non-Jew who is paid a trifling fee to turn out the lights or turn on the stove, or whatever else is needful to get around the more annoying regulations of the Sabbath. How the old buzzard must cackle when he sees the gentiles actually volunteering a bribe to do the lowly work! And lowly it is,” wrote Hitchens, “involving the tearing-up of international law and U.N. resolutions and election promises, and the further dispossession and eviction of a people to whom we gave our word…. [We] will most certainly be made to regret it. For now, though, the shame.”
He rhetorically asked Israelis, in Slate: “Without God on your side, what the hell are you doing in the greater Jerusalem area in the first place?”
Christopher Hitchens' 'Hostility' To Israel | The Jewish Week
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- Public Discussion (6)
It is confusing to me what topics are open to criticisms and which ones are taboo, and to whom. To me, no topic should be silenced. Freedom of speech is our right to hear it as well as say it.
I hope you will share an opinion on this one.
- 2 votes
#1 - Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:21 PM ESTHe has a point in so far as many political topics that are routinely discussed in Israel, especially on the Palestinian issue, are forbidden for Americans to talk about on pain of being labeled an anti-semite unless you adopt the Israel is always right stance.
By the way, I fully support an Israel in the 1967 boundaries, supported by a guarantee of full American, including setting up a trip wire system not unlike the one in Korea. I don't support Israeli expansionism.
- 1 vote
I've watched a few Hitchens debates with Jewish rabbi's and never heard anti-semitism. He was highly critical of Judaism, but he was no less critical of the other two religion of the big three. He may have viewed Judaism as the biggest 'evil' because it's the root of the other two. Who can say? Either way, challenging the ideas put forth by Judaism or questioning and challenging Zionism, does not a bigot make.
- 4 votes
#2 - Wed Dec 21, 2011 10:49 PM ESTThanks Grish. Exactly. That is my own difficulties with the left, if we want to call it that. Clearly rational people can criticise religious and non religious policy without being accused of manufactured racism. It is up to you, with your great public writing to keep the work going. No pressure. LoL
- 2 votes
LOL. I'll do my best, KD. :)
I hope you stop by my column. Not a plug or anything, but the cancer association has turned down 500k in donations from an atheist group. I hope you'll help raise awareness about this crime and maybe send a FB message or email to ACS.
- 3 votes
I was listening to the radio in the car on the way home the other night, and an alt-rock station was having some fun with the first evening of the Festival of Lights by playing songs from bands with members who have any sort of Jewish heritage. A guest on the program was the head of some local Jewish organization, and she was rattling off some famous people whose Jewish heritage was not widely known, and she said "we claim them all - we even claim Christopher Hitchens." Hitchens body probably hadn't even assumed room temperture yet, and she felt ok with publicly slapping him in the face. I found it very disturbing.
- 1 vote
#3 - Thu Dec 22, 2011 7:46 AM ESTYou're in Easy Mode. If you prefer, you can use XHTML Mode instead. |
