Peter Beinart gave a very good talk – at once eloquent and morally and intellectually serious – at UCLA Hillel last night … The response from part of the audience left me sick to my stomach. The basic theme – stated in so many words by one participant – was “they brought it on themselves.” To hear Jews talking about collective ethnic guilt in tones worthy of Der Sturmer was really more than I could handle.  I left after being personally accused of indifference to the Shoah because I refused to profess indifference to the suffering of Arabs.

I am not inclined to defend the gesammelte Schriften of Tony Kushner, but I am perfectly happy to defend his right not to adhere to the neocon party-line on Israel. To offer him and then withdraw an honorary CUNY degree solely because of his views on Israel, and to give him no chance to defend himself, is an ugly but unsurprising thing. Goldblog has the right response:

Kushner strikes me, from a distance, as one of those sons-of-the-people who wakes up worrying about the Jews, and goes to sleep worrying about the Jews. I think his discomfort with Jewish power is mainly misplaced, but turning him into a free-speech martyr? Is that what a handful of Jews want to do with their political power?

Yes it is. The policing of discourse on this matter is repellent.