If you're one of those speakers about to make a tour of our college campuses ? beware and get ready for "The Boys From Brazil." Sharansky knows, Bibi knows, and even I know.
You remember that movie, of course, and that superb "what if" novel by Ira Levin. The plot boils down to this: Josef Mengele has cloned 94 copies of Hitler... the young Adolph.
Duplicate Hitlers are all over the world.
I just said this was a novel (and later a movie) and therefore it must be fiction. But don't tell that to any pro-Israel speaker who stands before an audience of college students.
Recently, Israel's Natan Sharansky was jeered off the podium at Rutgers in New Jersey and before that, Benjamin Netanyahu shared the same indignity at Concordia in Montreal, and so it goes with others trying to get a word in edgewise in favor of Israel. These kids (Hitler clones or Hitler Youth) arrive at the auditorium already goose-stepping from spells cast by Mengele and Noam Chomsky and (the late) Edward Said and a thousand more like-winded professors.
So-called "humanitarian" movements have turned too many of our universities into Waffen-Occupied territory. In my backyard, at Rutgers, we've got New Jersey Solidarity. Self-named "activists for the liberation of Palestine," they are mobilized as shock troops to silence dissenting points of view. (What happened to panty raids?)
Imagine what it's like, as a speaker, to gaze out at an audience and find 94-plus Young Adolphs staring back? (Yes, I'm embellishing, but not that much.) Some years ago, I made the mistake of offering myself up as a speaker at such a campus in New Jersey. The topic wasn't even about Israel, something else altogether, but talk got around to a novel I had written with a strong pro-Israel theme (yes, Indecent Proposal, but later airbrushed by Hollywood), and that's when the swastikas hit the fan.
When I offered facts, one kid straight out of Levin's book and movie said there's no such thing as facts, or even truth. Truth is whatever you believe. (Does Kierkegaard have a hand in this?) I asked the kid what he was in for. He was going to become a doctor, a surgeon... a surgeon who may or may not have cheated on his brain-surgery exams, since truth doesn't exist.
What gets you about these kids is how they're all so ticked off. (Some call it "politicized.")
So I'm never surprised when I read about Sharansky and all the rest. I could have told Bibi and Sharansky what Tarzan told his sweetheart: "It's a jungle out there, Jane."
But was Levin on to something?
I'm not saying that this really happened, that Mengele multiplied Hitler ? or am I? Sure seems that way. How else to explain what's going on? I can understand old hatreds afflicting old minds. But kids? Our future? Who got to them so fast, so early? Or is it really in the genes - my theory - or implanted - Levin's theory?
In one form or another, Hitler lives. Never mind Malaysia. Portugal's 1998 Nobel laureate in literature, Jose Saramago, does not say that Jews rule the world. No, (speaking in Brazil(!)) Saramago says that the Jewish people deserve no more sympathy because they have failed to "learn anything" from the Holocaust. Yes, the Holocaust was a "lesson." (Will we ever learn?)
At the end of my New Jersey talk, when I asked how you could root against a nation outnumbered 22 to one, I got jeered. A professor, who identified himself as Jewish, assured the Young Hitlers that I was a hardliner and a minority. Most Jews, like him, favor a totally Arabic Israel. This got cheers.
On my way to the parking lot I ran into this professor. (I declined a security escort; but it was that bad.) There was so much I wanted to say. "Jerk," was all I could manage.
Speaking of jerks, Mel Gibson's alleged pogrom-inspiring movie is getting weird signals, like this, as reported in the back pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Assistant director Jan Michelini's umbrella was struck by lightning twice." Did you catch that and have you stopped laughing? Nobody gets hit by lightning twice unless it's a message. For some reason, none of this was reported elsewhere, far as I can tell, and moreover, why wasn't this a Front Page screaming headline? I'm thinking of that 1975 New York Daily News Front Page banner: ?FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD?.
Here, I offer the following: GOD TO MEL: TAKE THE HINT!
Speaking of headlines, this one came across all the news channels: the FBI has intensified security measures after receiving tips of an upswing in terrorism due to Ramadan, the month-long holiday celebrated by Bush's "peace-loving" Muslims. I must have missed the alert about Jews going on a rampage to celebrate Rosh Hashana, or of Christians blowing themselves up in honor of Christmas.
I'll know there's peace in the world when TV starts promoting Afghan Girls Gone Wild. Or when Playboy magazine features ?The Girls of Pakistan.
You remember that movie, of course, and that superb "what if" novel by Ira Levin. The plot boils down to this: Josef Mengele has cloned 94 copies of Hitler... the young Adolph.
Duplicate Hitlers are all over the world.
I just said this was a novel (and later a movie) and therefore it must be fiction. But don't tell that to any pro-Israel speaker who stands before an audience of college students.
Recently, Israel's Natan Sharansky was jeered off the podium at Rutgers in New Jersey and before that, Benjamin Netanyahu shared the same indignity at Concordia in Montreal, and so it goes with others trying to get a word in edgewise in favor of Israel. These kids (Hitler clones or Hitler Youth) arrive at the auditorium already goose-stepping from spells cast by Mengele and Noam Chomsky and (the late) Edward Said and a thousand more like-winded professors.
So-called "humanitarian" movements have turned too many of our universities into Waffen-Occupied territory. In my backyard, at Rutgers, we've got New Jersey Solidarity. Self-named "activists for the liberation of Palestine," they are mobilized as shock troops to silence dissenting points of view. (What happened to panty raids?)
Imagine what it's like, as a speaker, to gaze out at an audience and find 94-plus Young Adolphs staring back? (Yes, I'm embellishing, but not that much.) Some years ago, I made the mistake of offering myself up as a speaker at such a campus in New Jersey. The topic wasn't even about Israel, something else altogether, but talk got around to a novel I had written with a strong pro-Israel theme (yes, Indecent Proposal, but later airbrushed by Hollywood), and that's when the swastikas hit the fan.
When I offered facts, one kid straight out of Levin's book and movie said there's no such thing as facts, or even truth. Truth is whatever you believe. (Does Kierkegaard have a hand in this?) I asked the kid what he was in for. He was going to become a doctor, a surgeon... a surgeon who may or may not have cheated on his brain-surgery exams, since truth doesn't exist.
What gets you about these kids is how they're all so ticked off. (Some call it "politicized.")
So I'm never surprised when I read about Sharansky and all the rest. I could have told Bibi and Sharansky what Tarzan told his sweetheart: "It's a jungle out there, Jane."
But was Levin on to something?
I'm not saying that this really happened, that Mengele multiplied Hitler ? or am I? Sure seems that way. How else to explain what's going on? I can understand old hatreds afflicting old minds. But kids? Our future? Who got to them so fast, so early? Or is it really in the genes - my theory - or implanted - Levin's theory?
In one form or another, Hitler lives. Never mind Malaysia. Portugal's 1998 Nobel laureate in literature, Jose Saramago, does not say that Jews rule the world. No, (speaking in Brazil(!)) Saramago says that the Jewish people deserve no more sympathy because they have failed to "learn anything" from the Holocaust. Yes, the Holocaust was a "lesson." (Will we ever learn?)
At the end of my New Jersey talk, when I asked how you could root against a nation outnumbered 22 to one, I got jeered. A professor, who identified himself as Jewish, assured the Young Hitlers that I was a hardliner and a minority. Most Jews, like him, favor a totally Arabic Israel. This got cheers.
On my way to the parking lot I ran into this professor. (I declined a security escort; but it was that bad.) There was so much I wanted to say. "Jerk," was all I could manage.
Speaking of jerks, Mel Gibson's alleged pogrom-inspiring movie is getting weird signals, like this, as reported in the back pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Assistant director Jan Michelini's umbrella was struck by lightning twice." Did you catch that and have you stopped laughing? Nobody gets hit by lightning twice unless it's a message. For some reason, none of this was reported elsewhere, far as I can tell, and moreover, why wasn't this a Front Page screaming headline? I'm thinking of that 1975 New York Daily News Front Page banner: ?FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD?.
Here, I offer the following: GOD TO MEL: TAKE THE HINT!
Speaking of headlines, this one came across all the news channels: the FBI has intensified security measures after receiving tips of an upswing in terrorism due to Ramadan, the month-long holiday celebrated by Bush's "peace-loving" Muslims. I must have missed the alert about Jews going on a rampage to celebrate Rosh Hashana, or of Christians blowing themselves up in honor of Christmas.
I'll know there's peace in the world when TV starts promoting Afghan Girls Gone Wild. Or when Playboy magazine features ?The Girls of Pakistan.