Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: grande Howard Jacobson

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/its-official-thanks-to-stephen-hawkings-israel-boycott-antisemitism-is-no-more-8621112.html
 
 
 
 
Gather round, everybody. I bear important news. Anti-Semitism no
longer exists! Ring out, ye bells, the longest hatred has ceased to
be. It’s kaput, kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil,
joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. It’s a stiff, ladies and
gentlemen. An EX-PREJUDICE!
 
I first heard the news in a motion passed by the University and
College Union declaring that criticism of Israel can “never” be anti-
Semitic which, if “never” means “never”, is a guarantee that Jew-
hating is over, because ... Well, because it’s impossible to believe
that an active anti-Semite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek
out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing,
whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott
and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation
movements and the like. Of course, you don’t have to hate Jews to hate
Israel, but tell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity
congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-
hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers
of harvesting organs, then it follows that there’s no Jew-hating left.
 
These tidings would seem to be confirmed by Judge Anthony Snelson who,
investigating a complaint that the Union was institutionally anti-
Semitic, encountered not a trace of any such beast, no suggestion it
had lurked or was lurking, not the faintest rustle of its cerements,
not so much as a frozen shadow on a wall. Indeed, so squeaky-clean was
the union in all its anti-Israel motions and redefinitions of anti-
Semitism to suit itself, that Judge Snelson berated the Jewish
complainants, a) for wasting his time with evidence, b) for
irresponsibly raiding the public purse, and c) for trying to silence
debate, which is, of course, the rightful province of the Boycott and
Divestment movement.
 
It was this same Judge Snelson, reader, who ruled in favour of a
Muslim woman claiming the cocktail dress she was expected to wear,
while working as a cocktail waitress in Mayfair, “violated her
dignity”. Not for him the cheap shot of wondering what in that case
she was doing working as a cocktail waitress in a cocktail bar in
Mayfair. If she felt she was working in a “hostile environment”, then
she was working in a “hostile environment”, which is not to be
confused with a Jew feeling he is working in a hostile environment
since with the abolition of anti-Semitism there is no such thing as an
environment that’s hostile to a Jew. My point being that Judge
Snelson’s credentials as a man who knows a bigot from a barmcake are
impeccable.
 
And now, with Stephen Hawking announcing, by means of an Israeli-made
device, that he no longer wants to talk to the scientists who invented
it, or to Israeli scientists who invented or might invent anything
else, or indeed to Israeli historians, critics, biologists, physicists
of any complexion, no matter what their relations to Palestinian
scholars whom he does want to talk to, we are reminded that the
cultural boycott with which he has suddenly decided to throw in his
lot is entirely unJew-related, which is more good news. “Peace”, that
is all Professor Hawking seeks, a word that was left out of his
statement as reproduced on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign website,
presumably on the grounds that everyone already knows that peace is
all the PSC has ever wanted too.
 
To those who ask why Israel alone of all offending countries is to be
boycotted, the answer comes back loud and clear from boycotters that
because they cannot change the whole world, that is no reason not to
try to change some small part of it, in this case the part where they
feel they have the most chance of success, which also just happens to
be the part that’s Jewish. That this is, in fact, a “back-handed
compliment” to Jews, John MacGabhann, general secretary of the pro-
boycott Teachers’ Union of Ireland, made clear when he talked of
“expecting more of the Israeli government, precisely because we would
anticipate that Israeli governments would act in all instances and
ways to better uphold the rights of other”, which implies that he
expects less of other governments, and does not anticipate them to act
in all instances and ways better to uphold the rights of others. And
why? He can only mean, reader, because those other governments are not
Jewish.
 
I’d call this implicit racism if I were a citizen of those
circumambient Muslim countries that aren’t being boycotted – a tacit
assumption that nothing can ever be done, say, about the persecution
of women, the bombing of minorities, discrimination against
Christians, the hanging of adulterers and homosexuals, and so on,
because such things are intrinsic to their cultures – but at least now
that we have got rid of anti-Semitism, tackling Islamophobia should
not be slow to follow.
 
It’s heartening, anyway, after so many years of hearing Israel
described as intractable and pitiless, to learn that activists feel
it’s worth pushing at Israel’s door because there is a good chance of
its giving way. It’s further proof of our new abrogation of anti-
Semitism that we should now see Israel as a soft touch, the one
country in the world which, despite its annihilationist ambitions,
will feel the pain when actors, musicians, and secretaries of Irish
Teachers’ Unions stop exchanging views with it. All we need to do now
is recognise that those who would isolate Israel, silence it and maybe
even persuade it to accept its own illegitimacy intend nothing more by
it than love.
 
Can the day be far away when Israel no longer exists, when the
remaining rights-upholding, peace-loving countries of the region come
together in tolerance and amity, and it won’t even be necessary to
speak of anti-Semitism’s demise because we will have forgotten it ever
existed? That’s when Jews will know they’re finally safe. Ring out, ye
bells!

 out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing,
 
mi sembra abbastanza ragionevole. Chi non ha nemmeno  il coraggio di
dirsi anti-x, ancor meno ne avrà per mettere in pratica il suo anti-
xismo.