mediawatchwatch.org.uk

A British author, Carmen Callil, has had a launch party of her book cancelled because of pressure from Jewish groups unhappy with the final paragraphs.

Bad Faith investigates the history of the Vichy government’s collaboratoin with the Nazis in deporting the France’s Jewish population. The offending passage at the end of the book says:

The French forget Vichy, Australians forget the Aborigines, the English forget the Irish, Unionists forget the Catholics of Northern Ireland, the United States forgot Chile and forgets Guantanamo. Everyone forget East Timor and Rwanda. As I wrote this book, people constantly asked me how I could bear to write about such a villain and about such terrible things. In fact, horrors from the past did not deter me. What caused me anguish… was to live so closely to the helpless terror of the Jews of France, and to see what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people. Like the rest of humanity, the Jews of Israel ‘forget’ the Palestinians. Everyone forgets; every nation forgets.

Apparently any criticism of Israel, however implicit, is enough to get your parties, lectures, or seminars cancelled in the USA these days. This latest example follows the cancellation of two events by Tony Judt (mentioned in the Garton-Ash article cited below).

Judt, an American Jew, was due to give lectures on the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby on US foreign policy: the first at the Polish consulate – cancelled after “delicate pressure” was applied by two Jewish groups; and the second at Manhatten college – cancelled after threats of a demonstration by Holocaust survivors led to him being asked not to mention Israel in his lecture.