Saturday, November 5, 2016

Jeez, Louise...

Louise Adler (chief exec. of Melbourne University Publishing) reviews Judas by Amos Oz:

"Oz is literary royalty in Israel, often touted as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature... he refuses to be silenced on the Middle East impasse." (Betrayal may not be all that it seemed, The Australian, 30/10/16)

Jeez, Louise, who TF is trying to "silence" Amos Oz? Really, now!

"Since 1967, Amos Oz has argued for a two-state solution to the equally legitimate yearning for national self-determination of Israelis and Palestinians."

Jeez, Louise, you can't invade someone else's country, under the protection of British bayonets, colonise it, drive out most of the indigenous population in 1948, more again in 1967, then go on to occupy and colonise the remainder (1967-2016), and get to call it self-determination. Sorry, but no.

"As a consequence, he has become accustomed to being described as a traitor... 

Jeez, Louise, for advocating that the Indians get a reservation on the West Bank? Seriously?

"As Judas is to Jesus, as Oz is to Israel, Abravanel ['the only member of the Zionist executive to argue for peaceful co-existence with the Arab inhabitants with whom he dared to fraternise'] is to Ben Gurion. He becomes the traitor of 1948, ostracised for daring to suggest peace with the Arabs requires the Jews not to demand a state of their own, to resist their own assertion of power."

Jeez, Louise, really now, was there anyone on the "Zionist executive" in 1948 even remotely like this Abravanel/Oz character? Was there? And, seriously, do you, hand-on-heart, find it at all credible that Abravanel made it all the way to the "Zionist executive," only to balk at the core tenet of Zionism, namely a Jewish state in Palestine from the River to the Sea, at the very last moment?

And finally, Jeez, Louise, nothing at all to say about the Israel=Jesus Christ equation?

3 comments:

Grappler said...

Oz for Nobel Prize in Literature? Well if the person who wrote this can get it, I suspect Oz is indeed a prime contender:


Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man
His enemies say he's on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive
He's criticized and condemned for being alive
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He's wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He's always on trial for just being born
He's the neighborhood bully.


So much tosh and it goes on! And where's the poetry?

MERC said...

See my 11/4/11 post Bobby Dazzler.

Grappler said...

Just read your "Bobby Dazzler" post, MERC. Spot on! I hadn't discovered you at that time.