There's no room for a double standard on anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism, not "the occupation, lies at the root of terrorism directed at Jews in Israel and around the world. So what happens when a Hollywood player, Oliver Stone, reveals his anti-Semitism?

Jeff Jacoby, writing in the Boston Globe and on his website compares the reaction to Mel Gibson's tirade against Jews to Oliver Stone's. He asks, "is there a double standard?"

LATE IN JULY, a Hollywood honcho uncorks a blast of anti-Semitic bile, the sort of malignant stereotype about Jews one might expect from David Duke or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Is that newsworthy?

It certainly was in 2006, when Mel Gibson, arrested in Malibu for drunken driving, demanded to know whether the arresting deputy was Jewish, and then launched into an anti-Semitic rant: "F-----g Jews," he raged. "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

Calls went out for folks to boycott Gibson movies and to never work with him again. More than 1,000 news items were filed in the week after the incident.

Now, turn to Oliver Stone, the most recent prominent Hollywood figure to blame Jews for the world's ills and "Jewish domination of the media". One week later, less than 150 items have been posted. "On ABC, CBS, and NBC, the news shows completely ignored the story. The New York Times restricted its coverage to two short items in its "Arts, Briefly" section -- and few other papers ran even that much.

No widespread calls for a boycott of Stone and his work.

So, Jacoby wonders,

Gibson and Stone are both guilty of indulging in rank anti-Semitism (for which both promptly "apologized"), but only Gibson was buried under a newsroom avalanche of outrage and disgust. What explains that glaring difference? Surely the media don't think Jew-baiting is intolerable only when it comes from a right-wing Christian like Gibson. Surely they wouldn't overlook Stone's noxious rant just because he is a pluperfect left-wing activist.

Surely that can't be the explanation for so disgraceful a double standard.

Can it?

Oh, yes it can. And that's what I think.

Lockerbie bomber's release - something rotten?

Those of us who follow the health of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi are surprised that the man is alive. After all, weren't we told that he was released from prison because he was dying from cancer and had only weeks to live.

Now there are rumors that oil giant BP might have had a say in al-Megrahi's release. Secretary of State Clinton is looking for answers and Senators from New Jersey and New York are planning to meet British PM Cameron while he is in Washington.

No one seems to know all the circumstances surrounding al-Megrahi's release and it's something worthwhile to investigate. Did BP violate law? Did Scot politicians and government officials? Let's see.

Read the full article from the Star-Ledger, British prime minister to meet with N.J. Sens. Lautenberg, Menendez to discuss Lockerbie bomber.

Daniel Gordis: Rest in pieces

Those who come across Terror Victims' Voice on a regular basis know that I am a fan of Daniel Gordis. The reason for that is that Gordis is one of the finer writers addressing Israeli affairs. His writing is most elegant and to the point. He expresses in words what many feel but find difficulty expressing. His July 16, 2010 column in the Jerusalem Post is no exception.

Gordis writes about his encounter with his Israeli Arab handyman Khaled. Khaled comes across a photo on Gordis's wall of broken tombstones in a Jewish cemetery. Khaled is shocked that people would destroy Jewish tombstones. Even in death, Jews are hated.

When we come across people such as Khaled, and I have been in that situation myself, you don't know quite how far to go when explaining facts that may be unknown to your listener. Gordis, too, runs into that problem.

Gordis then shifts from Khaled to the speaker at a program in Tel Aviv. Contrary to what might have been Khaled's open mind, Gordis comes up against Dr. Raif Zreik of Tel Aviv University.

Zreik, it was immediately obvious, is an intellectual to be reckoned with. Educated at Hebrew University, Columbia and Harvard, he is extraordinarily articulate, speaks a mellifluous Hebrew and doesn’t pull punches. Nor did he waste any time.

Zreik began by explaining why he knew he wouldn’t change our minds. The difference between an intellectual and an ideologue, he said, is that an intellectual can surprise himself. Intellectuals are sufficiently open-minded and rational that they occasionally find themselves adopting positions different from what they’d originally thought. An ideologue can never do that, he said.

By the end of the evening it is clear that it is Zreik who turns out is the ideologue.

This week, Jews will mark the fast day of Tisha B'Av (the 9th of the month of Av.) It's a date set out in Jewish history with one tragedy after another happening on that date. It was the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem on that date almost 2,000 years ago that resonates with Jews around the world today. But is Tisha B'Av still relevant in modern times?

Gordis thinks so.

For me, moments like an evening with Dr. Zreik, articulate and brilliant though he is, make the case for this period of mourning. It’s not just about the past, but also about the future, about what could still happen, and what may already be beginning.

Read the full column Rest in pieces .

Well, that's what I have to say.
Stephen M. Flatow

Jeff Jacoby - "There is no ‘good’ communist "

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby comments on the acceptability of Communism to a liberal world.

IF JOSÉ Saramago, the Portuguese writer who died on Friday at 87, had been an unrepentant Nazi for the last four decades, he would never have won international acclaim or received the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

But Saramago wasn’t a Nazi, he was a communist. And not just a nominal communist, as his obituaries pointed out, but an “unabashed’’ (Washington Post), “unflinching’’ (AP), “unfaltering’’ (New York Times) true believer.

Without a hint of irony, AP’s obituary quoted a comment Saramago made in 1998: “People used to say about me, ‘He’s good but he’s a communist.’ Now they say, ‘He’s a communist but he’s good.’ ’’

But the idea that good people can be devoted communists is grotesque. The two categories are mutually exclusive. There was a time, perhaps, when dedication to communism could be absolved as misplaced idealism or naiveté, but that day is long past.

Communist regimes have murdered, according to Jacoby, 100 million men, women and children. And Communism is still a horror to those who live under it.

Anyone who imagines that the horrors of communist rule is a thing of the past ought to spend a few minutes with, say, the State Department’s latest human rights report on North Korea.

Jacoby's position, and it should be ours, is that there is no such thing as a good Communist. Read the full column - There is no ‘good’ communist

American home grown terrorists sentenced in Pakistan

From the New York Times of June 24, 2010,

A Pakistani court sentenced five American Muslim men who had been arrested in Punjab Province to 10 years of labor in prison on Thursday for conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks, in a case that amplified worries about the radicalization of Muslims in the United States.

We spend a lot of time in America trying to understand the mindset of young men and, perhaps, women, who yearn for a jihadist lifestyle.

Experts say that the young Americans, often children of integrated Muslim immigrants, are not immune to the calls of jihad by militant organizations, which play on feelings of frustration and confusion about identity common in young, first- and second-generation men.

Once again, let's blame "confusion of identity" for sending these young men off the path. Perhaps a Muslim lifestyle is to blame; perhaps it is a lifestyle that cannot coexist within America's melting pot. Nonsense, there are many sects and people of deep religious belief whose children do not dream of jihad and martyrdom. Stop blaming society and point the finger where the trouble lies-- propagators of those who would harm us picking on susceptible and impressionable young men to do their dirty work.

Well, that's what I think. Read the full story.