States of Exile

Michael Chabon writes : Now, with the memory of the Mavi Marmara fresh in our minds, is the time for Jews to confront, at long last, the eternal truth of our stupidity as a people, which I will stack, blunder for blunder, against that of any other nation now or at any time living on this planet of folly, in this world of Chelm. Here's a representative take from the "race realist" community: This claim has never sounded terribly reasonable to me, but it's been said that this is the real reason that liberals won't touch HBD: the fear that people will find out that Jews really are more intelligent. Despite Chabon's literary, unscientific protests, it seems pretty clear that at least the Ashkenazi branch is. If they aren't more intelligent, as Chabon insists, we've got a pretty good case of disparate impact here, with all the ingredients for a class-action suit. So Chabon wants to have it both ways: Jews are no smarter than everyone else, and please ignor...

From Christopher Hitchens' memoir Hitch 22 : There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background ... but under various reading of three codes which I don't respect much (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti-Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world -- or more probably comes to us via the Muslim world -- I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. ... The Jews will not be "saved" or "redeemed." (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this is in some ways as it should be.

Have Jews learned anything since the time of Jesus about not creating martyrs? Actually I retract the term Jews. This flotilla debacle demonstrates the difference between Jews and Israelis. I may not be macho and extroverted, but I'm clever enough not to play into my enemies' hands. Israeli have been in the sun too long. It's wiped away their Yiddish cunning.