Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Oh, Really?

This weird comment of Carole Angier I found in a book review of AB Yehoshua's newly translated novel:

...I'm sorry, but Jews cannot avoid Palestinians any more than Germans can avoid Jews...



I presume that Ms. Angier (*) wouldn't want me or anyone else to think that what the Germans did to the Jews is in any way comparable to what Israel is accused of doing to the Arabs and what seh really meant was that there are certain topics that are doomed to be linked but I am sure that if she thought a bit more, that she could have come up with a better example, like, say, what the British have done and are doing to the Irish.

But, I would maintain, after all the Arabs have done to us, attempting to thwart international legal decisions to permit us to reconstitute our national home and kill us from 1920 on, we could do very well to avoid both the Arabs, their claims and their fellow-travellers and supporters, Angier included.




(*) The Guardian had this to print about her Primo Levi biography:

Carole Angier's new life of Italian writer Primo Levi, The Double Bond, is not only exhaustive, but also exhausting and Hilary Spurling's blurrb also attests that she 'could hardly put it down'. I could hardly pick it up: it weighs two kilos. It is panoptically informative and indefatigably researched, but did no one think of editing it?

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