Anti-Semitism at the New York Times

[Rogue Valley]

Except that Walker is an anti-Semite. From the OP link:

". . . Walker, who last year posted the poem “It Is Our (Frightful) Duty To Study The Talmud” on her blog, is beyond mere accusation. She’s the genuine anti-Semitic article. Apparently informed by her odd reading of the ancient Jewish text, Walker’s 2017 poem asked some questions: “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews?” “Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse? Are young boys fair game for rape?” . . . "

I don't subscribe to the Talmud myself. That doesn't make me anti-Semitic.

Nor does disagreeing with Israeli policy regarding the territories. You have some weird notions Jack.

 

[X Factor]

I don't subscribe to the Talmud myself. That doesn't make me anti-Semitic.

Nor does disagreeing with Israeli policy regarding the territories. You have some weird notions Jack.

Supporting Hamas could be a solid indicator though, given their stated end goal.

 

[Jack Hays]

Anti-Semitism is a hallmark of the far right. It wasn't liberals chanting "Jews will not replace us."

Anti-Semitism, once a phenomenon of the right, has now also taken root on the left. The British Labour Party is now led by an anti-Semite. Not everyone on the left (or the right) is anti-Semitic, but no part of the political spectrum is any longer immune.

This thread is not about the broad left or right populations, but rather about the anti-Semitism of Ms. Walker and the NYT's inadequate response.

 

[Jack Hays]

I don't subscribe to the Talmud myself. That doesn't make me anti-Semitic.

Nor does disagreeing with Israeli policy regarding the territories. You have some weird notions Jack.

This thread has nothing to do with Israeli policy toward the territories. It has to do with the vile anti-Semitism of Ms. Walker and the NYT's inadequate response. Again:

". . . Walker’s 2017 poem asked some questions: “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews?” “Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse? Are young boys fair game for rape?” . . . "

 

[Rogue Valley]

This thread has nothing to do with Israeli policy toward the territories.

In the link you supplied in Post #21, she does indeed discuss her distaste for both the Talmud and Israeli policy in the territories.

Do you even read the pages you link to?

 

[Jack Hays]

In the link you supplied in Post #21, she does indeed discuss her distaste for both the Talmud and Israeli policy in the territories.

Do you even read the pages you link to?

The portion of the link embodying anti-Semitism was that which was quoted, which does not reference Israel or the occupation. There is no connection made between criticism of Israeli policy and Ms. Walker's anti-Semitism.

 

[rocket88]

Anti-Semitism, once a phenomenon of the right, has now also taken root on the left. The British Labour Party is now led by an anti-Semite. Not everyone on the left (or the right) is anti-Semitic, but no part of the political spectrum is any longer immune.

This thread is not about the broad left or right populations, but rather about the anti-Semitism of Ms. Walker and the NYT's inadequate response.

No doubt there is anti-Semitism there. But I don't blame the Times for not playing thought police. They asked a question and printed the response. The fact that we don't like the response is of no consequence. They finally did what conservatives have been pushing them to do for years - report facts unbiased.

 

[Rogue Valley]

The portion of the link embodying anti-Semitism was that which was quoted, which does not reference Israel or the occupation. There is no connection made between criticism of Israeli policy and Ms. Walker's anti-Semitism.

So, you cherry-pick what you want and snuff out the remaining context?

Poor form Jack.

 

[Hawkeye10]

This thread has nothing to do with Israeli policy toward the territories. It has to do with the vile anti-Semitism of Ms. Walker and the NYT's inadequate response. Again:

". . . Walker’s 2017 poem asked some questions: “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews?” “Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse? Are young boys fair game for rape?” . . . "

It is not journalists job to push agendas, to tell us how we should think, what it is OK to believe and what it is not OK to believe.... their job is to inform us on what is going on which they did here.

Besides who is the NYT's to be lecturing on what a noted and respected author should and should not be reading.....They need to stay in their lane.

 

[Jack Hays]

No doubt there is anti-Semitism there. But I don't blame the Times for not playing thought police. They asked a question and printed the response. The fact that we don't like the response is of no consequence. They finally did what conservatives have been pushing them to do for years - report facts unbiased.

This has nothing to do with conservatism (or liberalism for that matter). It has to do with the loss of moral sense. From the OP link:

The tone of Paul’s response is appalling. She surely does not mean to, but she manages to treat anti-Semitism as just another point of view — not a hatred with a unique and appalling pedigree that has led to unending slaughter, including the murder of 6 million, pogroms in Kielce in Poland (1946), York in England (1190) and the lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia (1915). What’s lacking from the Times is appropriate shock at Alice Walker’s bigotry and its own refusal to admit a mistake. An apology would be fit to print.

 

[Jack Hays]

So, you cherry-pick what you want and snuff out the remaining context?

Poor form Jack.

No. Ms. Walker's anti-Semitism stands alone. She made the choice to discuss child rape, no one else.

 

[Jack Hays]

It is not journalists job to push agendas, to tell us how we should think, what it is OK to believe and what it is not OK to believe.... their job is to inform us on what is going on which they did here.

Besides who is the NYT's to be lecturing on what a noted and respected author should and should not be reading.....They need to stay in their lane.

It's not what she reads, It's what she wrote.

Walker, who last year posted the poem “It Is Our (Frightful) Duty To Study The Talmud” on her blog, is beyond mere accusation. She’s the genuine anti-Semitic article. Apparently informed by her odd reading of the ancient Jewish text, Walker’s 2017 poem asked some questions: “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews?” “Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse? Are young boys fair game for rape?”

 

[Evilroddy]

Once again this is a conflation of the label of anti-semitism with the willingness to publicly level legitimate criticism at the State of Israel for its state policies. They are not the same thing. Ms. Walker's poem was about Israeli military seizure of the Levant and the forcible dislocation of the Palestinian people who had legally lived on that land prior to the creation of the modern State of Israel. Then when she became publicly vocal about that forcible displacement and blamed the State of Israel publicly for how it behaved towards the Palestinians, a "Jewish soul" who had formerly been an old friend of hers then turned against her and labelled her anti-Semetic publicly.

To try and explain why many Israelis and sympathetic other folks support these policies of conquest and forcible dislocation, she went to the Talmud to explain the mentality which makes such policies unquestioned or at least palatable in one now-dominant version of the Judeo-Christian tradition. How many times have posters here cited the Bible or the Koran to explain Christian or Muslim motivations for what each group does, fair or foul? I will admit that using YouTube videos is a weak justification for an argument but weak argumentation does not equate with anti-semitism. Nor does asking questions about the teachings in the Talmud. We debaters often use questions about the Bible, the Koran and other holy scriptures to get insights into the basic motivations of people of certain faiths; so why is the same analysis off limits if the texts are Jewish texts? There is no reason to label someone who asks disturbing questions about any religion's holy texts (Jewish or otherwise) as being anti-this or anti-that. Questions are good and are healthy because they force us to regularly confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves and our values; questions we might otherwise like to avoid. Socrates warned about living the unexamined life, and the Greeks of Athens eventually forced him to commit suicide for it due to the discomfort which his questions caused the Greeks. Shall we do the same to Ms. Walker for asking questions which are profoundly unpopular today?

The David Icke book on her night-table is just another swipe at Ms. Walker. That one reads a book with odious ideas does not necessarily mean that one subscribes to those ideas. I have books like the Bible, the Christian Apocrypha, the Koran, the Torah but I am not Christian, Muslim or Jewish. I'm just uncertain and agnostic. I have what some would no doubt describe as odious books on my bookshelves like Marx and Engle's "The Communist Manifesto", Hitler's and Hess's "Mein Kampf" or Mao Zhedong's "Guerrilla Warfare" but I am not a revolutionary Fascist-Communist-Maoist. To read a book does not mean the reader endorses the book, only that the reader is now aware of the book's content and some of the ideas of the author.

So the writer Cohen in the OP's cited article is, in my opinion, doing a character assassination job on Ms. Walker because of her publicly stated opposition to the policies of the State of Israel and not because she harbours strong anti-Jewish opinions/convictions and advocates them to the detriment of all Jews everywhere.

Tempest in a Teapot. Except for the harm it is doing to Alice Walker.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

 

[Evilroddy]

In order to understand some phenomena, you have to read it and dissect it.

If Mein Kampf was on my nightstand, would that fact infer that I am a Nazi or a Hitler supporter?

Some of you folks need to escape your confirmation bubbles.

Rogue Valley:

Well said, sir. Hear, hear.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

 

[OlNate]

The only person broad brushing "the entire left" is you. The OP focuses on the NYT. I offered one response in the thread to a poster who claimed it was just an excuse to bash liberals. Not true. I pointed out that anti-Semitism, once a phenomenon of the right, has now also taken root on the left. Neither every conservative nor every liberal is anti-Semitic, but some are.

Oh yeah? Then perhaps I'm misreading the following, and you'd like to clarify:

1. It is breathtaking presumption to assert someone is "pretending to care."
2. It is a sad fact that anti-Semitism, once a far right phenomenon, has now taken root on the left.

"Taken root on the left"? Ok..... :roll:

 

[rocket88]

This has nothing to do with conservatism (or liberalism for that matter). It has to do with the loss of moral sense. From the OP link:

The tone of Paul’s response is appalling. She surely does not mean to, but she manages to treat anti-Semitism as just another point of view — not a hatred with a unique and appalling pedigree that has led to unending slaughter, including the murder of 6 million, pogroms in Kielce in Poland (1946), York in England (1190) and the lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia (1915). What’s lacking from the Times is appropriate shock at Alice Walker’s bigotry and its own refusal to admit a mistake. An apology would be fit to print.

Ok, but in the end, you want the Times to run everything through a PC lens. You want them to be partisan.

 

[Jack Hays]

Oh yeah? Then perhaps I'm misreading the following, and you'd like to clarify:



"Taken root on the left"? Ok..... :roll:

The comment you cited is the one I cited as well. They are perfectly consistent with one another, and neither uses a "broad brush." The sad fact remains that there are now examples of anti-Semitism on the left. Most notoriously, the leader of the British Labour Party is an anti-Semite.

 

[Jack Hays]

Ok, but in the end, you want the Times to run everything through a PC lens. You want them to be partisan.

No. I want them to resist this hate with the same moral vigor they displayed after Trump's stupid post-Charlottesville remark, for example.

 

[MTAtech]

Here's an ugly episode, with the New York Times normalizing hate.





Anti-Semitism is not just another opinion. The New York Times should know better.

• By Richard Cohen

Over the centuries, anti-Semitism has been many things — a religious conviction, an ideology, a national ethic, an unadorned expression of hate and, in more recent times, evidence of sturdy insanity. Now thanks to a New York Times interview with Alice Walker, it’s been reduced to merely a point of view. To cite the Times’s own motto, this interview was definitely not “news that’s fit to print.”
Walker, of course, is a highly praised novelist best known for “The Color Purple,” for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. Her renown is great, and it was no doubt on this basis that the Times interviewed her for its “By the Book” feature that runs in the Sunday Book Review. The trouble started with the first question.
“What books are on your nightstand?” the Times asked. The second book Walker named was “And the Truth Shall Set You Free” by the British conspiracy theorist David Icke. The book is so repellently anti-Semitic that Icke’s usual publisher wouldn’t touch it. Among other things, it endorses that hoary anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which blames evil Jews for much of the world’s ills. The book also suggests that schools ought to balance lessons on the Holocaust with some questioning whether it ever even happened, and it reveals that the world is run by a cabal of giant, shape-shifting lizards, many of whom just happen to be Jewish.
Times readers howled. The paper should have flagged the book as an anti-Semitic tome, they insisted. The Times disagreed. It doesn’t do that sort of thing in its “By the Book” feature. In the Times’s response, the paper conceded that Icke “has been accused of anti-Semitism,” a bit like conceding that David Duke has been accused of racism. Walker, who last year posted the poem “It Is Our (Frightful) Duty To Study The Talmud” on her blog, is beyond mere accusation. She’s the genuine anti-Semitic article. Apparently informed by her odd reading of the ancient Jewish text, Walker’s 2017 poem asked some questions: “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews?” “Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse? Are young boys fair game for rape?”. . . .

Let me understand this: According to the OP, the NY Times is antisemitic but they let one of their Jewish columnists criticize the paper.

 

[Jack Hays]

Let me understand this: According to the OP, the NY Times is antisemitic but they let one of their Jewish columnists criticize the paper.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post.

 

[Rogue Valley]

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post.

You - and Cohen - are way off base here.

As others have noted, this is blatant character assassination by Richard Cohen due to Alice Walker's criticism's of Israeli policy in the territories.

Geezus Jack, this is truthatallcosts territory. Do you really want to walk that disgusting path?

 

[Jack Hays]

You - and Cohen - are way off base here.

As others have noted, this is blatant character assassination by Richard Cohen due to Alice Walker's criticism's of Israeli policy in the territories.

Geezus Jack, this is truthatallcosts territory. Do you really want to walk that disgusting path?

No. Alice Walker is a plain old anti-Semite. There is no connection between Israeli policy and child rape.

Walker’s 2017 poem asked some questions: “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews?” “Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse? Are young boys fair game for rape?”. . . .

 

[Rogue Valley]

No. Alice Walker is a plain old anti-Semite. There is no connection between Israeli policy and child rape.

Walker’s 2017 poem asked some questions: “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews?” “Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse? Are young boys fair game for rape?”. . . .

Well, I see no reason to continue with this CT thread. Cya.

 

[washunut]

No. Alice Walker is a plain old anti-Semite. There is no connection between Israeli policy and child rape.

Walker’s 2017 poem asked some questions: “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews?” “Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse? Are young boys fair game for rape?”. . . .

I find the back and forth in this thread interesting. Wondering if you were talking about David Duke or some other racist would you get so much pushback.

Not unusual for Jews to be welcome in a country,have some success then comes the attacks both verbal and physical.

 

[rocket88]

No. I want them to resist this hate with the same moral vigor they displayed after Trump's stupid post-Charlottesville remark, for example.

Which was them being political and taking a side.