Matt Barganier at Antiwar Blog:
Historian Tony Judt, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and director of the Remarque Institute at NYU, writes,
I was due to speak this evening, in Manhattan, to a group called Network 20/20 comprising young business leaders, NGO, academics, etc, from the US and many countries. Topic: the Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. The meetings are always held at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan.
I just received a call from the President of Network 20/20. The talk was cancelled because the Polish Consulate had been threatened by the Anti-Defamation League. Serial phone calls from ADL President Abe Foxman warned them off hosting anything involving Tony Judt. If they persisted, he warned, he would smear the charge of Polish collaboration with anti-Israeli anti-Semites (= me) all over the front page of every daily paper in the city (an indirect quote). They caved and Network 20/20 were forced to cancel.
Whatever your views on the Middle East I hope you find this as serious and frightening as I do. This is, or used to be, the United States of America.
The New York Sun confirms the cancellation, but not without adding its own angle on the story:
The government of Poland, moving to avoid getting embroiled in anti-Israel politics, last night abruptly canceled a scheduled speech by a professor at New York University who has become hostile to the Jewish state [bold mine-DL], just hours before the event was to have taken place at Poland’s consulate here in New York.
The decision to cancel the speech, which was billed as being about “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” is a signal of the quickening entente between free Poland and Israel, a relationship that is all the more remarkable for the fact that among the founders of Israel were Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Poland. A Polish diplomat told The New York Sun that the speech, by the NYU professor Tony Judt, would have been inappropriate for the Polish consulate.
Of course to say that Tony Judt has become “hostile to the Jewish state” is a joke. He has become openly critical of pro-Israel influence on U.S. foreign policy, and he has proposed the (admittedly unworkable) idea of a unitary Israeli-Palestinian state. To the Sun, it is all the same thing: criticism and proposals equal hostility pure and simple. But thank goodness there is absolutely no pro-Israel lobby to be found, or else those sorts of conflations might become a problem for free and open debate on topics relating to the Near East!
Update: Philip Weiss has a few comments on the cancellation of Judt’s speech.
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October 4th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Grumpy Old Man
The ADL is notoriously ham-handed* as to what it identifies as anti-Semitism.
Judt, whether he’s right or wrong, ain’t no anti-Semite. Mel Gibson may harbor anti-Jewish sentiments when he’s manic and drunk, but the ADL’s hysteria about the Passion film was equally stupid and inaccurate.
Although some genuine hardcore anti-Semites do invoke “anti-Zionism” and misguided “Christian” themes, you’d think an organization that claims expertise in the subject could tell the difference.
Paradoxically, a majority of Americans of Jewish descent, who are mostly secular or “liberal” in religion, are dubious about aggressive Israeli policies, and not particularly supportive of “neocon” foreign policy. With the “professional Jews” and some of the big donors, it’s a different story. They’re fervently pro-Israel, organized, and play hardball.
Using charges like “racism” and “anti-Semitism” to stifle legitimate expressions of opinion is shameful and all too common. Moreover, the “boy who cried wolf” concept applies to them.
________________
*Snarky, that.
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October 4th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Grumpy Old Man
In fairness we should note that the Sun story does contain a denial of pressure by Abe Foxman, head of the ADL:
Judt says otherwise, and Foxman’s denial is less than convincing..
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October 4th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Daniel Larison
Thanks for your comments. Thanks also for mentioning Foxman’s denial, which I probably should have noted somewhere in there. I saw it in the story, but it occurred to me that Foxman would have every reason to want to deny using influence to shut down a public discussion. I thought it would just as well to let readers reach their own conclusions from the sources.
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October 4th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Grumpy Old Man
I didn’t intend to imply any criticism of your post. It’s just that many are so touchy on the subject that it’s best to pose the discussion so that it centers on the core issues, and not on minor omissions or perceived slights.
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October 13th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Scott Lahti
See Leon Wieseltier’s dissenting view at The New Republic:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20061023&s=diarist102306
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October 24th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Scott Lahti
In an open letter to Abraham Foxman published in The New York Review of Books for November 2, 2006, close to 100 writers from across the liberal left, spearheaded by Mark Lilla and Richard Sennett and including Leon Wieseltier, take the ADL to task for its role in l’affaire Judt:
“Though we, the undersigned, have many disagreements about political matters, foreign and domestic, we are united in believing that a climate of intimidation is inconsistent with fundamental principles of debate in a democracy. The Polish Consulate is not obliged to promote free speech. But the rules of the game in America oblige citizens to encourage rather than stifle public debate. We who have signed this letter are dismayed that the ADL did not choose to play a more constructive role in promoting liberty.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19550