Regarding < this interview in the New Yorker>: A response.
As I know from being a reporter (and as opposed to the myth we all had agendas), all I had to do was let someone talk and then print a transcript. They showed their moral bankruptcy or stupidity or cupidity themselves without help. This reporter has done exactly that.
While outside the Irving trial and her bio I don’t know much about her or her path here, but this reveals serious, mealy-mouthed moral bankruptcy. She’s on board with the “both sides are good people” thought school and seems to have been bought off by an American embassy in Jerusalem.
While outside the Irving trial and her bio I don’t know much about her or her path here, but this reveals serious, mealy-mouthed moral bankruptcy. She’s on board with the “both sides are good people” thought school and seems to have been bought off by an American embassy in Jerusalem.
Have to wonder how she rationalizes an administration that celebrates a white Christian nationalist pastor, Joel Webbon. As I said, just print the transcript and they eagerly reveal who they are:
“I do think that there’s some level of not all Jews, but particular Jews in positions of political power in the West, outside of Israel, not their own country, but in our country or in England or this or that, and opening the door to Muslims to come and ravage the nation. …
“So I see Muslims, not as our friends, but doing this, destroying nations. But I see Jews holding open the door.”—Joel Webbon [Right Response Ministries livestream, 21-Apr-25.] “Oh, but that beautiful embassy in Jerusalem!” <ahem>
Back to Lipstadt: Her very weak response to the American GeStaPo snatch-and-grab mass arrests of non-Jews and their “resettlement” in the south makes me wonder: Would she have, voluntarily or not, served on on one of the Judenräten in the German-occupied East?
Sadly, for me at least, she gives her answer in her own words. Makes you wonder what she said off record. She has the serious career and credentials behind her, but ghat’s all the more reason not to falter now.
While her reticence might be down to worry about threats, she HAS way more to fear from the truly antisemitic American right wing, who have for centuries put down any Jew, fellow traveller or not. She now reminds me of the character Aaron Jastrow from “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance.”
Antisemitism is wrong. Full stop. The state of Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, & the West Bank, full stop. Fascism & genocide are wrong whether perpetrated by Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Communist, atheist or my Aunt Fanny. Both the above statements are true. No gray.
“If they don’t stand for something, they will fall for anything.” — Gordon A. Eadie, 1945
When you’ve done all you know stand, then stand there, to paraphrase Ephesians, which adds that your stand should be made while wearing the whole armor of your faith—your moral compass.
It’s trite, but never again is now. So as for me and my house, I stand. Wholly and on the record, unafraid.