A deeply depressing appointment reveals how completely draconian the Bush administration is on the issue of recreational drugs. Once again, states’ rights appear to mean nothing to some social conservatives who want to control what people do in private with their own bodies.
BLAMING THE VICTIMS: Why is it important for Eric Alterman that the extraordinary evidence of rising French anti-Semitism should be dismissed, and, if anything, blamed on the Jews? Here’s Alterman’s take on a bracing piece in the Washington Post about anti-semitism in France:
Memo to Everyone: In discussing “French anti-Semitism,” take a moment to notice that it is almost entirely a phenomenon of that nation’s North African and Arab immigrant community, not of the traditional (mildly anti-Semitic) French. There is no surge in French anti-Semitism at all and it is probably at a historical low ebb among French men and women. It is certainly not a phenomenon of the French Left. This piece points out: “Most of the perpetrators are not the ultra-rightists and neo-Nazis who once were responsible for anti-Semitic acts, but young North African Arabs of the banlieues, the distant blue-collar suburbs where Muslims and Jews live and work in close proximity.” And if it’s a really big concern of yours, by the way, the best way to ameliorate it would be for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. The occupation is obviously its primary source.
To describe fanatical anti-Semitism among many Arabs today as a function of the occupation of the West Bank is blind enough. To deny the widespread hostility to Israel and to Jews among the French elites, to ignore the way in which the French authorities have turned a blind eye to such fanaticism, to talk as if such anti-Semitism is at a low ebb (with no evidence whatsoever) and to pin the blame for it on Ariel Sharon is truly disgusting. It’s even more disgusting since Alterman’s thesis is that French anti-Americanism is entirely a response to the Bush administration. How long before he cites attacks on Jewish cemeteries or synagogues as George W. Bush’s fault?
The Dish 