"Hitchens has every right to change his mind about the issues of the day. What some of us find unsettling is the ease with which he is today able to denounce as lacking in moral intelligence people who agree with positions he himself spouted as recently as the spring of 2002."
-Chris Bertram Crooked Timber Dec.29.03
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"Hitchens mother is Jewish. That technically makes him Jewish but he is no friend of the Jewish people. "
-Israpundit (dedicated to pro-Israel advocacy through the presentation of news and views.)
This is a my second post to the comments section of Crooked Timber for the article cited above:
One of the reasons what I�m saying is so opaque is the subject itself is opaque to me. Something�s going on there, I don�t have the poli-sci background or the geo-political connections to get any deeper or wider views about what it is than the bits and pieces of Internet news.
But what I hope may show through to someone who reads what I wrote without the automatic reflexes of political correctness is I am not being �anti-semitic�.
Hitchens does seem to think of Sharon and Co. as thuggish, and he professes admiration for Yitzhak Rabin as do I, as I discovered when I actually sought out and read some of his recent stuff.
So that was a serious error, and I retract that statement, or whatever one does here besides just subside in cringeing shame.
I don�t fully understand why American media is so universally pro-Israeli. I believe still that the American presence in Iraq has more to do with Israel than it does oil.
But I now see Hitchens as a more complex individual, and regret very much having shot myself in the foot there.
