Today, David Brooks published in The New York Times an op-ed, entitled "The Tel Aviv Cluster", alluding to Jewish achievement and Israeli technological success. Although the op-ed proved thought provoking, I thought the online comments to this op-ed reflecting the "New" anti-Semitism of the Left, were also of interest.
Examples:
From comment No. 16: "The Goldstone report (1100 civilians killed) and recent desperate peace missions to Gaza (Israel's open air prison where Palestinians are freezing and starving) might paint a different picture of the current state of affairs in that proud nation."
Response: According to IDF figures, of the 1,166 Palestinian deaths during Operation Cast Lead, only 295 were civilians. Palestinians are freezing and starving in Gaza? It has been a moderate winter on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, and I am not aware of anyone freezing. Likewise, although there is indeed much poverty in Gaza, I have not heard of a single person starving. According to the CIA World Factbook, Gazans have a life expectancy of 73.42 years at birth.
From comment No. 7: "You also do not mention that Israel is by far the largest recipient of foreign aid from the US of any nation, and has been for a long time. No wonder they don't have to worry about bailouts! And that the big, wealthy Jewish lobbying group, AIPAC, has the power to make or break any politician in this country! And has! . . . High tech creativity is terrific, but it should not be celebrated when it is on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised!"
Response: Pakistan and Egypt are both receiving billions of dollars of aid from the U.S., but there is no nascent hi-tech. U.S. Congresswoman Betty McCollum and U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison are no friends of Israel, but that nasty cabal named AIPAC has not broken them. Hi-tech "on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised"? I am an external advisor to an Israeli hi-tech firm seeking to be the world leader in the discovery of product candidates for the drug and diagnostic industry, and here, all this while, I thought this company's remarkable therapeutic candidates were intended to benefit all of mankind. Silly me! The "disenfranchised"? Some 60% of Israel's population consists of Jews who were deprived of all their belongings and physically evicted from their homes in the surrounding Arab countries.
From comment No. 20: "'Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies.' I'm not sure if this is an indication of academic excellence or academic favoritism. In any event this statistic is the most troubling of all that were offered."
Response: How strange! I can still remember a time when certain Ivy League schools restricted the number of Jews they were willing to accept. Now these same schools are controlled by manipulative Jews? Let's immediately commission an investigation!
From comment No. 21: "And it is the tail that wags the American dog."
Response: Why does this smack of "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion", a text purporting to describe a plan to achieve global domination by the Jewish people? And here I always thought that the U.S. and Israel were bound by common democratic values and mutual admiration. How foolish could I possibly be!
From comment No. 15: ". . . as our great nation the USA has recently shown, cheered on by one bright jew david brooks, a small bunch of stupid men claiming to be closer to god but really just being stupid, selfish and unfair, can run enormous fortunes into the ground and make enemies out of old friends."
Response: Once again, the revolting Jews, who claim to be God's chosen people, were responsible for the most recent economic downturn. When did we last hear this in Europe in the not too distant past?
From comment No. 8: "Curiously, Israel’s great success has been, as David Brooks suggests, an entirely different story. In the world of commerce and trade, especially at the consumer level, Israel’s influence has been negligible. There are hardly any Israeli consumer goods to be found in the world’s shopping centers and malls. Where are Israeli writers, poets, entertainers, artists, philosophers, foundational thinkers in the humanities and sciences?"
Response: I don't know if this amounts to anti-Semitism or mere stupidity. Obviously the author of this comment is unaware of the Israeli invented chips powering many computers. He is unaware of Israeli medical devices and medicines. He is unaware of Israeli authors Amos Oz, David Grossman and A.B. Yehoshua. He is unaware of Israeli violinists Pinkas Zuckerman and Itzhak Perlman, pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, and the Israeli Philharmonic. He is unaware of the Batsheva Dance Company. And the list continues ad nauseam in response to this nauseating comment.
Bottom line: How did The New York Times, which claims to "moderate" online comments and purports to reject those which are abusive, see fit to publish all of the above? More to the point, would The Times agree to publish such abuse were it directed at any other people?
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I am an indian guy from the state of kerala. We have one of the oldest synagogues and also a place in which jews were not killed.
ReplyDeleteI was shocked to read the biography of Feynman at the anti semitism he got in US then.
Anyways, why do you think the roots of this is?
Hi Jay,
ReplyDeleteRichard Feynman the physicist? The anti-Semitism he experienced at Cornell?
Perhaps you noticed the comment to Brooks' New York Times op-ed, which implied possible preferential treatment given to Jews applying to Ivy League schools!
The roots of anti-Semitism? That of the Left (what you see in The New York Times comments and hear from Jimmy Carter) or that of the Right? European anti-Semitism or that experienced by Jews in Muslim countries?
One of my favorite books on the subject, although limited in scope to Germany, is "The Pity of It All" by Amos Elon.
There are articles and books on the topic without end.
Jeffrey
Thank you, Jeffrey! NYTimes uses Brooks article as pretext to publish all this anti-Semitic rant by their readers. They give the selected readers the last word, so the effect of the publication is further legitimization of anti-Semitism in the US.
ReplyDeleteThe comments further confirm that what makes Jews proud, makes other people to hate them.
This time they let you publish your comment, saying that Israelis will not leave the country. I am pretty sure, they would not allow you to publish this rebuttal.
while channel surfing in the early 2000's i happened across a symposium taking place at the 92nd Street Y on C-span, there Arthur Gelb former managing editor of TNYT said: Sulzberger ordered that reports of atrocities against Jews leading up to the War were to be downplayed or not reported at all. i firmly believe the NYT is a mortal enemy of the Jewish people.
ReplyDeleteBTW reading the comments to Brooks' article and noting that most of the highly recommended comments are written by Jew haters. keep up the good fight, herb glatter herb@glatter.biz
When an Amnesty International solicitor recently came to my door to ask for a donation (I had given in the past), I asked why Israel's "war crime"--white phosphorous--was splashed across the front page of their web site, while Hamas's persistent rocket attacks against the civilian population of Israel was not.
ReplyDeleteThe solicitor pondered this for a few seconds and then said: because we hold Israel to a higher standard.
Perhaps the Left's anti-Semitism is the price for Jewish talent and success...
Yesterday I sent this blog entry to Andrew Rosenthal, with whom I have corresponded in the past. Rosenthal has not replied.
ReplyDeleteJeffrey
"There are hardly any Israeli consumer goods to be found in the world’s shopping centers and malls."
ReplyDeleteNeed I mention Teva,the world's largest producer of generic drugs,with their own important proprietary offerings such as Copaxone.Sales of this company projected to more than double in the next five years.
Certainly a more important contribution than fashion offerings found in those malls.