LAWSON: His critique of RICHARD FALK’S ARTICLE

 

A critique of RICHARD FALK’S ARTICLE

ON JEWISH IDENTITY 

(Intifada Palestine, 20 January, 2011)

By Anthony Lawson

Although the motives of the writer may be sincere, there are a few points that I feel must be made about certain passages which tend to be defensive, rather than accurate, as to some of the things that are taught to Jews, or, at the very least, what the results of what is taught appears to lead to.

Quote:

“I have felt uncomfortable since childhood with biblical claims, often repeated in contemporary social settings, that Jews are ‘the chosen people’ of God even if this is understood benevolently and temporally as a special destiny associated with doing justice rather than as a matter of societal achievement via wealth and professional success.”

With the best will in the world, there do not appear to be many recorded instances of ‘the chosen people’ being benevolent to those who are not chosen, and, unless certain passages of the Torah, the Old Testament and the Talmud have been very badly translated, or certain rabbis currently teaching in Israel and elsewhere are way off track, then those who are not Jewish are still regarded as no better than cattle, as the current plight of the Palestinians attests to.

Of course it will be argued that this kind of thinking is limited to a very few extremists, who take the scriptures rather too literally, but the continual killing of Palestinians, and the destruction of Palestinian property as well as Operation Cast Lead and the attack on the Mavi Marmara give the lie to those kinds of excuses, so the best that could be said of this passage is that it is muddled thinking, in the extreme.  Perhaps it is how Mr Falk would like things to be, rather than how they appear to be to all but the most biased observers.

I also take issue with this statement:

Quote:

“And, of course, the historical climax of inverted exclusivity was the Holocaust, a process in which Jews (along with the Roma and others) were chosen for extermination.”

If we are going to talk about exclusivity, the current narrative of the Holocaust is steeped in it, so much so that it is, exclusively, the one-and-only historical subject which is likely to get one charged and sent to prison, should one calmly, and without malice attempt to question a particular facet of the official story, even though that facet may have already been proven to be false, and if the place where you do it has the requisite laws in place.

Anthony Lawson 

above and below; a sound of truth.

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Anthony Lawson (known professionally as Tony Lawson) is a retired international-prize-winning commercials director, cameraman, ad agency creative director and voice over. He used to be known for shooting humorous commercials, but doesn’t find much to laugh about, with the way the world is going, these days.

And the truth 

shall set you free.