Julie Burchill's op-ed column is thoroughly crass and insensitive, but
what disgusts me about it is not so much the implicit definition of
Britain's Jews as a "them" (i.e. an alien community outwith "us"), as the
O.K.-Yah brutalism that underpins it. Anything - such as a real event or
issue - that disrupts the round of cocktail party gossip about who is
sleeping with who or which Tory M.P. might be about to stab John Major in the
back is tiresome. And genuine distress over the assassination of a
democratically elected leader in another country (who just so happens to
be doing something about one of the worst sources of international
confrontation and crisis in the world since 1945) is just very too too.
Jews reading this nasty little column can probably fairly safely
reassure themselves that Ms Burchill would be just as insensitive and
unconcerned if it had been the Pope, the Dalai Lama, or indeed anyone
who's not "fun" to be with in the wonderful London of the 1990s.
Daniel Szechi
Auburn University