M.J. Rosenberg, of Israel Policy Forum, tried to post re the Philadelphia event I blogged about and wasn’t able to. Thank you, M.J. Here’s his comment:
This is sad, actually. I read about this event in Philly and then read Ron Rosenbaum‘s incoherent weeping at SLATE.
Then I think about my in-laws who survived the Holocaust
and who always said that American Jews who scream about anti-semitism
in the US do not have a clue about what anti-antisemitism is. My
father-in-law used the example of being a teenager, playing soccer with
his friends, and suddenly a gang of "hooligans" come along with sticks
screaming "kill the Jews" and wielding them against the littlest kids.
I asked him how often that happened. He said, "well, this was
before the Germans came and before the war. So we played football
every day. It happened every day, except Shabbes because we didn’t
play then."
But here idiots are weeping over an imminent holocaust because
one book criticizing a Jewish organization is on the best-seller list.
Oh how my late father-in-law would laugh.
Note: most of the people
weeping over Walt-Mearsheimer are (like myself) aging babyboomers —
or, of course, older. And the sad fact is that after 55 or so the
incidence of this malady — Dershowitis — increases. That is the
illness whereby a sharp, cool 3rd generation American Jew, at home in
America as Kanye West or Justin Timberlake, wakes up and sees Ed Koch in the mirror, open his mouth and he’s Jackie Mason.
Marty Peretz has suffered from Dershowitis since about 1970. He
actually was afflicted at 35 (Dershowitis praecox) but that is rare.
I don’t have it yet. I’m hopeful. My dad didn’t come down with the disease til he was 80.
It’s fatal and there is no cure although sufferers are always
praying for a cure, which is why they spend so much time in synagogue.
