Letter of the Week by Professor Paul Gottfried

Anti-Semitism, Classical Liberalism, Free Speech, Individual Rights

Letter of the Week is by Paul Gottfried, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, and author of The Conservative Movement, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy. Professor Gottfried’s new book is The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium.–ILANA

Ilana,
This commentary, “One Man’s ‘Malady,’ Another Man’s Fetish,” is entirely on target. Gibson’s stupid remarks while under the influence are grist for the mills of the leftist social engineers and coercive anti-fascists who run our cultural industry. Although Foxman may care about Jewish women who fall victim to Arab terrorists, he cares much less about such embarrassments than he does about the opportunity to play up the anti-Semitic faux pas of an avowedly conservative Catholic, who dared to make a film on the crucifixion.
By the way, the Passion, which I did see, was not only unbelievably gory but totally implausible. It is impossible for any human being, outside of the Catholic iconographic imagination, to endure so much suffering and blood loss and to survive for an entire day. A German Protestant friend who saw the movie thought it was the greatest advertisement for the Puritans that he had witnessed. The Reformation did away with such gory depictions, together with most other depictions, of religious figures. Watching the Passion was like revisiting a Sicilian shrine that I once stumbled upon in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

—Paul

P.S. I’ve always considered Gibson to be a bit of a loud-mouthed exhibitionist, and his movies have been anything but consistently rightwing. Remember the movie he played in with Danny Glover, in which American agents are trying to foil the machinations of powerful Nazi drug-dealers based in apartheid South Africa?

Mel's 'Malady,' Foxman's Fetish

Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Hollywood, Judaism & Jews, Media

[Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League] “had more to say about Gibson than he had about Seattle’s jihadist du jour, Naveed Afzal Haq. Last week, Haq murdered a Jewish woman and critically injured five other women at the downtown Jewish Federation building…
As a representative of the Jewish community, albeit self-appointed, Foxman needs lessons in etiquette. It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act gracious—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering. Gibson may be uncouth, but Foxman is equally grubby…”

The complete column, “Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish,” is here. In it, I also take a good long swipe at the “The Delphic oracles of the disease theory of delinquency,” vis-Ã -vis Mel Gibson’s so-called disease.

Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish

Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Hollywood, Judaism & Jews, Media

This Time, Israel is Dead Wrong

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism, War

I’m a Zionist and proud. Look no further than the arguments I’ve advanced in defense of a beleaguered Israel over the years.

I believe Israel has a right to the land it bought from willing Arabs (Turks and locals) using private funds. Jews established a majority in a sliver of Israel they purchased fair and square. Upon that majority, a young UN conferred statehood, recognizing the Jewish people’s natural right to have non-coercively purchased land from those willing to sell it, and resettle a territory that had been barren. The Jewish State enshrined minority rights in its Declaration of Independence and in its laws and institutions.

Many impoverished idealistic Jews died warding off Arab attackers and draining swamps. The idea that prior to the Jewish state Muslims and Jews lived in harmony is a humbug. Defenseless pacifist Jews have always been victims of periodic Muslim onslaught. When Muhammad’s muse moved them, the indigenous (often nomadic) Arabs would pounce. The massacres of 1920, 1921, and 1929 are examples:

The targets were not Zionists who had dispossessed Arabs of their lands, but for the most part Jewish communities of the ‘old Yishuv,’ communities that had lived in Palestine for many hundreds of years. The pogroms were of the same general character as pogroms that had taken place sporadically in Palestine for hundreds of years, usually referred to euphemistically by Jews of Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem and Hebron as ‘Meoraot’—’events.’ The worst massacres took place in Safed, Hebron, Jerusalem and Motza. Like the pogroms of past ages, these ‘disturbances’ featured angry crowds stirred up over a religious or other dispute, Imams preaching ‘Kill the Jews wherever you find them,’ and mobs screaming ‘Aleihum’ (get them) and ‘Itbach Al Yahood’—murder the Jews. In a few days, over a hundred Jews were murdered and several hundreds were wounded. [That’s in 1929.]

While there were indeed injustices against the local population after the Arab countries attacked Israel in 1948, these were sporadic, not systematic. The charge of planned ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is bogus.

I hold that the “society” that sends suicide bombers into Israel proper is a savage and atrophying one—not because of Israel or America, but because of its own values and sources of inspirations. Ditto that state-within-a-state, Hezbollah.

I am fully aware of the staged set-ups in the war in Lebanon. The Jenin “massacre” fable and the Mohammed Al-Dura case are among the more notorious hoaxes perpetrated by propagandizing Arabs on the West.

However, the hoaxes do not explain away a devastated Lebanon—destruction so wanton it must turn the stomach of any honest human being.

The ongoing frauds, long an arrow in the Arab quiver, do not resurrect the 900 Lebanese dead, nor restore close to one million homeless to their obliterated homes.

You can discount what the hard-left, the far-right, and the far-gone libertarians say about Israel, if you like. Because their positions are intransigent—Israel evil; Arabs good—they can be said to evince ingrained bias.

But given my long-standing pro-Israel position, you cannot discard my stance.

And it is this: It is impossible to finesse Israel’s wrongs. The Israeli Air Force’s shock-and-awe has been barbaric. Instead of starting with precision, “deep-penetration” operations, Israel began with brute force, turning Lebanon into a parking lot and its inhabitants into homeless people.

I repeat what I said two weeks back, “Hezbollah (and Hamas) target civilians and hide among them. Although necessary, this fact, however, is not sufficient to exempt Israel from responsibility for its direct actions. For those, Israel can’t shirk accountability. It can’t claim it didn’t intend to take out civilians when Israeli generals can both see and foresee the devastating results of their bombardments.”

Any principled human being devoted to justice and freedom has to be repulsed by what Israel has done and is busy doing.