Wednesday, September 17, 2008

OMG! Tikkun has been silenced!

One more before I go. In the debates on antisemitism and Israel/Palestine, people are always complaining of being silenced. Well, how would you have had this matter go?

3 comments:

bob said...

Matt, I don't think "silenced" is exactly the right word here. Tikkun made a terrible mistake. Either:
(1) they knowingly published a piece by an antisemitic conspiracy theorist - a possibily hinted at by the Editor's Note preceding the article, which begin: "Like most of what Israel Shamir writes about Israel,...", suggesting some familiarity with his opus.
(2) they were familiar with his work, but didn't google hard enough to know he is not Jewish, and who he is associated with. If this is true, it indicates gross sloppiness on Tikkun's part: the wikipedia page (currently google hit no.3) or Searchlight's page (no.4) make his real identity clear.
(3) they were utterly stupid, didn't bother to try and find out who he is, and perhaps added the Editor's Note later. This would indicate even grosser sloppiness. This would also contradict Dimitri Zagoroff's claim that the Editor's Note was there when Karl Pfeifer wrote to him.

So, Tikkun were smart enough to change their mind, and not publish a piece by a Nazi. This is not exactly the same as them "being silenced".

I have always liked Tikkun, even when I disagree with a lot of it, and defended it against more por-Zionist folks. That defence is not going to be so easy now.

--

Hope Poland is/was good

b

Matt said...

I was, perhaps being mean, mocking the idea that people are silenced. If people who complain about being silenced wish to draw a distintion, that's up to them.

bob said...

Sorry! Failed to read the irony. (My employer actually has a written policy for e-mail: "always label irony". Needless to say, I tend not to comply with that policy!

b