I have found it to be a good rule of thumb that anyone who identifies as a philosemite is to be treated with the same amused contempt as anyone who says they love “the African people”. Julie Burchill has probably been the most egregious example in Britain for some time, writing newspaper columns with her customary delicacy about her abject admiration of “the Jewish people”. (Are we chosen? Are we intelligent? Are we stoical? Why, I think we are.) Now, for no justifiable reason, she has written a book, Unchosen, about her lifelong teenage-like obsession with “the Jews”. This stems from when she first found out as a youngster about the Holocaust, which was, like, totally tragic and amazing and terrible, yeah? Cue a lifetime of loving Jews by reducing them to insulting stereotypes. Jews, according to Burchill, are fascinatingly exotic. She gets crushes on the men and she loves all the adorable Jewish people in Israel, who are all chosen and stoical and wise – like people in storybooks, really! Jews are also, according to Burchill, the diametric opposite of Muslim people, who are all horrible, and their oppression of women is much worse than the oppressive codes for orthodox Jewish women, because Jews are good and Muslim people are bad. Burchill, for the record, is 55 years old. Burchill divides up the chosen people into Good Jews (hardliners, Israelites) and Bad Jews (liberal Jews) with the enthusiasm of an antisemite. Hilariously, she sets herself up as the Jewishness Police, railing against Jews who are not Jewish enough; and one of those, it turns out, is her local rabbi, Elli Tikvah Sarah. Burchill rails against the rabbi for, in this order: ignoring a bottle of champagne Burchill gave her in favour of elderflower wine made by the rabbi’s girlfriend; “canoodling” with said girlfriend (“a Sapphic free-for-all”, sneers the heretofore not exactly prudish Burchill), and advocating a dialogue with Islam. Burchill doesn’t include this in the book but, according to Rabbi Sarah, Burchill emailed the synagogue’s congregants railing that “your rabbi respects PIG ISLAM”. Aww, being used as a launchpad for a British columnist’s racism – we’re living in the Promised Land now, fellow Jews! theguardian/commentisfree/2014/nov/07/god-save-jews-from-philosemitism
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 13:06:41 +0000