Why Blame the Kid?

CAMERA is proud that it succeeded in having a campus newspaper apologize for pubishing an article that blamed Jews themselves for anti-semitism.

It seems that on Oct. 18, Portland State University’s student newspaper, the Daily Vanguard published a column by staff member Caelan MacTavish. The opinion piece, entitled "Religious disputes over Jerusalem require diplomacy," blamed the Jews themselves for anti-Semitism, disparaged the Jewish people, and included a number of absurd factual errors about Judaism and Israel.

That same day, CAMERA contacted the Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper to point out the problems and errors in MacTavish's column and to express grave concern with the piece. We also urged the newspaper to publish an apology for running the column. Portland State students, faculty and others also protested the newspaper's decision to publish the hateful column.

To his credit, the editor listened to our concerns, and readily agreed to consider our points and discuss the matter with his colleagues. This week, the crude and bigoted column was pulled from the Daily Vanguard Web site.

But why blame the kid?

AB Yehoshua, world-famous Israeli author, thinks the same way.

In this report
we learn that, according to Yehoshua

"The Gentiles feel threatened by Jews, because they have a double identity. The Gentile does not grasp that concept and so he might, under some conditions, react to it with violence."

According to Yehoshua, every Jew around the world recognizes himself as such before he assumes any other identity.

Not only do Jews possess a dual identity, but they constantly change from one identity to another. This "chameleon characteristic" as he dubs it, is difficult to accomodate and also makes Gentiles uncomfortable.

"I think a 'defined identity' has more responsibility; it has limits, it is responsible for what it does. Amorphousness is a way to get away from responsibility," he says, adding, "I describe the facts. The Jew changes all the time. He can be assimilated without any visual indications of his identity, or he can distinguish himself, as does an Orthodox Jew. At the same time, he assumes the identity of whichever nation he occupies."

And there's more here.