Ideological Puritans Brand Critics of Israel
Posted: December 2nd, 2012, 2:58 pm
Scarlet 'A' Is for 'Anti-Semitism'
Ideological Puritans Brand Critics of Israel
Like Hester Prynne, the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel “The Scarlet Letter” about the rigid and harsh religiosity of 17th century Puritans, many contemporary Jewish intellectuals are marked with the infamous letter ‘A’ (not for adultery as in the novel, but for anti-Semitism).
Peter Beinart, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Avi Shlaim, Shlomo Sand and more recently, myself share the dubious privilege of being viewed as anti-Semitic by members of their own ethnic and religious community. What have we done to deserve such ignoble epithet? Nothing more than exercise the right to think and to evaluate critically the accomplishments and failures of the state of Israel.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/166068/scar ... z2DvFaanzo
Ideological Puritans Brand Critics of Israel
Like Hester Prynne, the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel “The Scarlet Letter” about the rigid and harsh religiosity of 17th century Puritans, many contemporary Jewish intellectuals are marked with the infamous letter ‘A’ (not for adultery as in the novel, but for anti-Semitism).
Peter Beinart, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Avi Shlaim, Shlomo Sand and more recently, myself share the dubious privilege of being viewed as anti-Semitic by members of their own ethnic and religious community. What have we done to deserve such ignoble epithet? Nothing more than exercise the right to think and to evaluate critically the accomplishments and failures of the state of Israel.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/166068/scar ... z2DvFaanzo
