On March 3, 2010, author and journalist Christopher Hitchens delivered the 2010 Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA. The topic was the various manifestations of anti-semitism. (See videos of the lecture and Q&A below.)
In particular, Hitchens expressed his outrage over anti-semitism on the Left:
I would have not expected to see the day when supposedly liberal websites…would [carry] stories about Israel stealing body parts…I didn’t expect to see, in my home country, leading Leftist members of parliament and activists making common cause with the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad and with the people who publish the Protocols. I would have thought it unthinkable, but it’s not. Given the immense contributions that the Jewish people have made to the liberal Left in every society, this seems to me almost the most painful aspect that this prejeudice is hurling at others. It needs to be fought without pity.
The Left believes that Islamic Jihadism is a movement of brown-skinned, disempowered people who’ve had a hard time. And if they’re against the United States Empire, they must be doing something right….Since the world proletariat turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, it never did what they asked of it, at least now there is an alternative source of power—a mass, disenfranchised movement of resentment.
Disappointingly—and, perhaps predictably, given Hitchens’ own criticisms of Israel—he was rather evasive on the the relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism. That’s regrettable, since much of the anti-semitism on the Left that he loathes is driven by—and expresses itself through—an anti-Zionist narrative.
And, of course, Hitchens being Hitchens, he had this to say about Mel Gibson’s drunken, anti-semitic tirade: “If whiskey made you anti-Jewish, the Pearl family would not have invited me here.”
I don’t believe that Mr. Hitchens evaded the question. At 21:14 he states that “Pretty much now any anti-Semite is also and anti-Zionist. That much is true.”
That much might be true. But, I’m more interested in his views on the extent to which anti-Zionist rhetoric on the Left has become a vehicle to express anti-semitic views.
Well, since he’s anti-zionist himself (or certainly was), it’s rather obvious that he wouldn’t be emphatic about how anti-zionism = anti-semitism, particularly as it doesn’t in his case.
I also really liked his anti-semitic joke.
Well, at least love for a good dram unites me, Hitchens and Gibson.
In general, it was a good speech, considering Hitch’s general attitude to Israel. Not always unjustified, I have to add. Much as it pains me.