Tony Judt update

A few weeks ago I wrote an attack on Tony Judt’s errant musings on Marxism in the New York Review of Books. It would be remiss of me to not mention that Judt has also been sticking it to the Cruise Missile Left as well as doing some yeoman work on the Middle East around the question of the Israel Lobby.

In a September 21 London Review article titled “Bush’s Useful Idiots,” Judt has these pithy words on the Paul Berman-Christopher Hitchens axis of evil:

It is the liberals, then, who count. They are, as it might be, the canaries in the sulphurous mineshaft of modern democracy. The alacrity with which many of America’s most prominent liberals have censored themselves in the name of the War on Terror, the enthusiasm with which they have invented ideological and moral cover for war and war crimes and proffered that cover to their political enemies: all this is a bad sign. Liberal intellectuals used to be distinguished precisely by their efforts to think for themselves, rather than in the service of others. Intellectuals should not be smugly theorising endless war, much less confidently promoting and excusing it. They should be engaged in disturbing the peace – their own above all.
After reading this article, Doug Henwood interviewed Judt on his radio show and you can listen to it here.

The London Review also has word about a debate that Judt participated in that fortunately can be seen online.

In March this year the London Review of Books published John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s essay ‘The Israel Lobby‘. The response to the article prompted the LRB to hold a debate under the heading ‘The Israel lobby: does it have too much influence on American foreign policy?’. The debate took place in New York on 28 September in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union. The panellists were Shlomo Ben-Ami, Martin Indyk, Tony Judt, Rashid Khalidi, John Mearsheimer and Dennis Ross, and the moderator was Anne-Marie Slaughter. The event was greatly oversubscribed, so we are delighted to announce that a video of the event, produced by ScribeMedia, is now available to view online.

Apparently, Judt has become an unperson in the eyes of the Antidefamation League, a Zionist outfit, as I learned this evening from a post to Doug Henwood’s mailing list by Doug himself and a communication from Doug Ireland:

SPEAKER PRESSURED

 Journalist Charles Class sends this letter by Tony Judt, the NYU Professor and Middle East Expert: “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 antisemites (= 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

Tony Judt

Things seem to be polarizing rapidly in the USA…