Richard Gere -- Suicide Kisser

by Jack Engelhard


This would not be a good time for Richard Gere to revisit India. There’s a warrant for his arrest. What did he do? He kissed India’s leading lady, Shilpa Shetty, during an AIDS-awareness event in New Delhi. All that took place out in the open, in front of the news media and others who craned for a glimpse of these two glamorous actors staging a worthy extravaganza.

Apparently, Gere failed to read the “Thank You For Not Kissing” signs posted across the country.

Extremists over there started rioting for what they termed lewd behavior. A court in Jaipur wants Gere to present himself before a magistrate, and Shetty also faces charges, though anyone who has seen the footage can attest that Shetty demurred and wanted no part of Gere’s public display of affection.

India’s “Bollywood” turns out more movies than our own Hollywood and it’s doubtful that most citizens of that great democracy support the moralistic and legalistic hysteria -- like this reaction from former attorney general Soli Sorabjee: “Magistrates should not behave like the Taliban moral police. The [arrest] order is unsustainable and makes us look ridiculous.”

Gere has apologized for his disorderly exuberance and Shetty continues to be burned in effigy. In one particular hot spot, Meerut, mobs have been chanting “Down with Shetty.” They want her movies banned. That probably won’t happen in movie-crazed India, where Shetty is a film goddess. Obviously, though, she’ll never eat lunch in that town again.

Shetty tried to calm the protesters by saying that kissing derives from Gere’s culture, not her culture:

“I understand people’s sentiments,” she said, “but I don’t want a foreigner to take back bad memories from here.”

Planting a kiss is not the same as planting a bomb and should be appreciated as a welcome distraction in a world gone mad -- or so you’d think.

This really isn’t about India as much as it is about a world that’s gone topsy-turvy. Mickey Mouse, anyone? Hamas has been broadcasting a Mickey Mouse look-alike to recruit Arab kindergarten children into the business of murdering Israelis – Jews and Christians. Is there no end to depravity? All this from Hamas in Gaza, the same Gaza that Israel handed over as a concession to peace. (We're told that this Mickey Mouse show has been pulled by the PA, Too late. Damage done, and those PA textbooks still carry the same message of hate.)

Gere is a practicing Buddhist, an adherent of the Dalai Lama, whose message is international harmony and interfaith healing. India generally encompasses those virtues and is famed as a literate nation that values inclusiveness and tolerance. So all that feverish denunciation (by only a fringe of the population) is truly an exception for India, not the rule

Those of us who’ve seen the (now disgraced) footage can only wonder what Gere (once dubbed the sexiest man alive) could have been thinking. He was indeed overly affectionate. Is that a crime? Yes, if you do it in some dark alley, but not when you’re promoting AIDS-awareness in front of the whole world.

He was only trying to make love, not war, and must still be mystified that his gesture backfired.

Who knows if there’s an extradition treaty between the United States and India for the crime of kissing, which could lead to dancing, and in fact, here’s part of Gere’s apology: “My clumsy attempt at a ‘Shall We Dance’ move was a naïve misread of Indian culture, and I assure you, nothing more.”

Can’t happen here, you say, this brand of moral outrage? Okay, back at the office, try this: “Hi, Deborah.. Love your new dress, and you look sensational today.”

Go ahead.

Creating Our Future Leadership

by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

How Self-Hatred in Israel differs from the Diaspora

by Steven Plaut

Please see this review of the excellent new book "Jewish Divide over Israel" by Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor, Transaction Books, 2006, reviewed by moi.

As part of the review, here is an observation on the difference between Israeli leftist Jewish self-hatred and assimilationist self-hatred in the Diaspora:

By and large, for such secularized assimilated Jews in the Diaspora, Jewish "self-hatred" was less a form of anti-Semitism than it was an expression of indifference to their own Jewish roots and origins.  Most "self-hating" assimilationist Jews in the Diaspora are simply non-Jewish Jews, people with no interest in belonging to the Jewish community or in practicing any form of Judaism.  By and large they do not actively wish other Jews harm and most have no sympathy at all for anti-Semites....

But Israeli Jewish anti-Semites are a completely different kettle of fish.  They are not posturing against Israel and against Jews because they are a small persecuted ethnic minority in some gentile country of residence.  It is true that there is an element of seeking social acceptance for them, attacking Jews and Israel in order to court favor among overseas anti-Semites, especially among Israeli leftists.  There is also clearly a repudiation of all attachment to Jews and Jewishness among such people, where "Canaanism" in the form of post-Jewish Israeliness is almost universal among Israeli anti-Semites.  But that is clearly not the same as Diaspora assimilationism.  Israeli anti-Semites may posture as "Jewish Palestinians", but none of them are seriously trying to learn Arabic or dress and live as Arabs.  

If Diaspora "self-hating" Jews are by and large simply indifferent to their Jewishness, Israeli Jewish anti-Semites quite openly hate their own people and country.  They invariably identify with and endorse the enemies of their country.  Tali Fahima and Udi Adiv differ from other Israeli anti-Semites only in the degree of their actual treason.  Israeli Jewish anti-Semites are not seeking social and cultural acceptance as much as they are seeking the destruction of their own people and the annihilation of their own country.  They resemble far more Lord Haw-Haw or Taliban John than they do the assimilated suburban American Jew.  

As such, Israeli Jewish anti-Semites increasingly resemble the candidly treasonous fringes of the American and European Left.  Just like the American Left is essentially little more than a movement of anti-Americanism and can be counted on to endorse every enemy of the United States and oppose American interests in everything, so the Israeli Left is motivated by an acute desire to see its own country harmed.  The difference of course is that the anti-American Left in the United States is harmless and an amusing distraction, whereas the radical self-hating Israeli Left is actively collaborating with the enemies of its own country during time of war and when the goal of those enemies is the annihilation of Israel.