Abstract

Anti-Semite? Self-Hating Jew? Moi?

This article criticizes libelous comments made by Boston Globe's Cathy Young against the author. That the Boston Globe is a great newspaper can be in no doubt, but the paper's opinion columnists have proven a constant source of embarrassment in recent years. No less a source of shame for the paper has been its publication of a previously obscure right-wing pundit named Cathy Young. Her most recent transgression involves yours truly. She seized on a brief blog item I wrote on Altercation.msnbc.com, in which I noted the insensitivity of demanding that Arabs attend Holocaust remembrance ceremonies. Young distorted my argument to accuse me of anti-Semitism and self-hatred. Your columnist is not only a pretty serious Jew, but has been writing on Israel and anti-Semitism, speaking in synagogues, minoring in Jewish studies during doctoral work, etc., since first publishing on anti-Semitism at Yale, in, um, the Boston Globe twenty years ago. As Peace Now's Jo-Ann Mort wrote to the Globe, "With friends like Cathy Young, the Jews don't need enemies." Neither does journalism.