Saturday, March 6, 2010
Christopher Hitchens decries anti-Semitism in lecture at UCLA
Christopher Hitchens, an internationally known columnist, intellectual and author whose provocative books and essays in Slate, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic and other publications have hammered at organized religion, the Clintons, Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa alike, appeared Wednesday, March 3, before a packed audience at UCLA to portray anti-Semitism as "the godfather of all other forms of racism" and "the gateway to the tyranny of fascism and war."
Alternating between black humor, biting sarcasm and insightful analysis, Hitchens took over the podium at Korn Convocation Hall to deliver the eighth annual Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA to an audience of more than 400 people, including Pearl's father, Judea Pearl, an emeritus professor of computer science at UCLA and president of a foundation formed to continue his son's mission of promoting cross-cultural understanding through journalism and music.
Daniel Pearl, a prominent Wall Street Journal reporter and the paper's South Asia bureau chief, was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002...
As usual, Hitchens mucks up a lecture that's brilliant in spots with sloppy mistakes and misrepresented "facts."
Neither Neturei Karta nor the Satmar (who would be pretty pissed at being called a sect of NK) nor any other Orthodox Jew claims that the earth is 4300 years old. All Hitchens had to do was bother to take a glance at a Jewish calendar to see that we're currently in the year 5770. He could easily have made the exact same point using the right number, but he just doesn't care (or maybe that WAS the point?)
And a brief perusal of Yad Vashem's website (let alone an actual visit to the memorial) will quickly show references to "the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis ...." Nowhere does it say anything about "four and a half million," and, in fact, this page puts the lie to Hitchens' claim.
So much for duty to historic truth.
Considering how ambivalent Hitchens is about Israel and diaspora Jews he seems an odd choice for this lecture.
I wonder why he screwed up such basic facts?
Sophia, he does that a lot, both when he's speaking and when he's writing. It's a mystery to me, but if I had to guess I'd say it's just laziness. Or arrogance. Or a combination of both.
And I would have to agree with Sharks (#2). Especially since Judea Pearl himself just a few years ago went on record as saying that "anti-Zionism is a form of racism more dangerous than classical anti-Semitism." Hitchens clearly opposes the idea that anti-Zionism is racism at all.
Christopher Hitchens is a great one to have on your side, but while he is very anti-anti-semitic, he is no friend of Israel.
Even after his post-9/11 political migration, he remains a confirmed anti-Zionist. I remember reading a Slate interview several years ago in which he said something to the effect that it was a ridiculous idea to turn Middle European watchmakers into soldiers. I guess he hadn't heard about the IDF having won any wars.
So he is a friend of the Jews, but only on terms that most Jews would not care to accept.
Actually, it was an interview in Front Page Magazine, not Slate. Here's the link:
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15054
Sorry ... all I see in him is a media-hungry pseudo-intellectual.
And one taken to drink to assuage his purposeless Godless life.
He got it wrong by a whole 1470 years??? How embarrassing.