Nick Goldberg has a great piece in the LA Times on the William I. Robinson case at UC Santa Barbara that basically/secretly comes down on Robinson's side, his right to pass around an email comparing Israeli human rights abuses with Nazi ones. It includes this nice wink-and-a-nod sociology lesson–'cause you're not allowed to address these issues directly in the MSM–
Is it anti-Semitic or merely factual to say that Hollywood is
controlled largely by Jews? (Remember: Most of the big studio chiefs
are Jewish.) Or to note (as some critics of the Iraq war did) that many
of the neoconservatives who helped devise the war's intellectual
rationale were Jewish — and possibly harbored a dual loyalty to
Israel? Or to point to the existence of a powerful "Israel lobby" that
wields substantial influence on Capitol Hill?
Goldberg does one thing I found too crafty. In an effort to balance his verdict on Robinson's side, he allows Daniel Jonah Goldhagen to state that it's anti-semitic to single out Israel again and again; Goldberg basically accepts the principle.
I don't agree. Well, I wouldn't, would I–I single Israel out again and again, don't I, and there are worse human rights abusers around the world. I do so because I'm American and I'm Jewish. So I'm specially implicated in these abuses. (In fact, I feel a special responsibility as a Jew to take the beam out of my country's eye rather than focus on the mote in someone else's. Didn't a Jew come up with that principle?)
(Some rainy day I have to get to this great response to David Frum from Noam Chomsky on that very question. I haven't listened to it, but Nader Hashemi informs me that Chomsky says Of course I give greater weight to Palestinian victims than, say, African ones, then explains why.)
