De wereld van Sofie, heeft antisemitisch grondslag!

[Al Sawt]

Schrijver Gaarder zwijgt na beschuldigingen van antisemitismeSchrijver Gaarder zwijgt na beschuldigingen van antisemitisme


OSLO - De bekende Noorse kinderboekenschrijver Jostein Gaarder wil geen commentaar meer geven op het conflict in het Midden-Oosten na de kritiek die de schrijver over zich heen kreeg voor zijn als provocerend ervaren tekst over Israël.

,,Ik moet mij van de volgende debatten terugtrekken'', zei de schrijver van ’De wereld van Sofie’.

In een bijdrage voor de krant Aftenposten verklaarde hij onder andere dat ,,we de staat Israël niet langer erkennen.''

Intellectuele en politieke personen uit joodse kringen verwijten hem antisemitisme en vergelijken zijn tekst met Mein Kampf van Adolf Hitler.

De Noorse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Jonas Gahr Stre, noemde de tekst van Gaarder ,,onacceptabel en verontrustend'' omdat in de tekst Israël het recht op bescherming door een VN-resolutie wordt ontnomen.

Gaarder schreef dat ,,Israël met zijn scrupuleuze oorlogskunst en zijn weerzinwekkende wapens zijn eigen legitimiteit op een gruwelijke manier heeft vermoord.''

De felle reactie uit Noorwegen richt zich ook op de kritiek die Gaarder had op de Joden en dat hij de Tien Geboden ,,amusementsstenen'' noemt. ,,Tweeduizend jaar geleden hebben we de lessen van de mensheid ingeslagen. Maar Israël luistert niet'', schreef hij.

Gaarder blijft bij zijn standpunt, behalve over zijn ,,irrelevante'' opmerking over de Tien Geboden.

Over het feit dat hij wordt beschuldigd van antisemitisme zei Gaarder: ,,Vanaf het ogenblik dat je Israël aanvalt, word je beschuldigd van antisemitisme.''


ht (dpa)09/08/2006

Bron (http://www.nieuwsblad.be/Article/Detail.aspx?ArticleID=DMF09082006_045)

[Qaiys]

Over het feit dat hij wordt beschuldigd van antisemitisme zei Gaarder: ,,Vanaf het ogenblik dat je Israël aanvalt, word je beschuldigd van antisemitisme.''


The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September 2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity.

Groups within the Lobby put pressure on particular academics and universities. Columbia has been a frequent target, no doubt because of the presence of the late Edward Said on its faculty. ‘One can be sure that any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the pre-eminent literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of emails, letters and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him,’ Jonathan Cole, its former provost, reported. When Columbia recruited the historian Rashid Khalidi from Chicago, the same thing happened. It was a problem Princeton also faced a few years later when it considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia.

A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred towards the end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film alleging that faculty members of Columbia’s Middle East Studies programme were anti-semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who stood up for Israel. Columbia was hauled over the coals, but a faculty committee which was assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-semitism and the only incident possibly worth noting was that one professor had ‘responded heatedly’ to a student’s question. The committee also discovered that the academics in question had themselves been the target of an overt campaign of intimidation.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the efforts Jewish groups have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to monitor what professors say. If they manage to get this passed, universities judged to have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal funding. Their efforts have not yet succeeded, but they are an indication of the importance placed on controlling debate.

A number of Jewish philanthropists have recently established Israel Studies programmes (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies programmes already in existence) so as to increase the number of Israel-friendly scholars on campus. In May 2003, NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies; similar programmes have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis and Emory. Academic administrators emphasise their pedagogical value, but the truth is that they are intended in large part to promote Israel’s image. Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes it clear that his foundation funded the NYU centre to help counter the ‘Arabic [sic] point of view’ that he thinks is prevalent in NYU’s Middle East programmes.

No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism . Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.


http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html