Dear Howard,
I write more out of sadness than anger. You have admitted that we are a “controversial people”, so I know you will take this answer in the spirit you give it. I have enjoyed every book you have written since your first novel. coming from behindPublished in 1983. Much of your writing resonated: your acuteness about campus politics, your refusal to deny, nay your pride, your particular ethnic version of the Mancunian working class and your great sense of satire.
Unlike your first teacher, the late Carmen Khalil, I do not object to your “masculinist” viewpoint. If your specialty seems to be penises who am I to argue?
Howard, in my favorite of all your books, Roots SchmutzYou admit that our people are “suffering from their own tragedy”. But that tragedy, and your grief, seems to have drowned out your capacity for empathy for another contemporary tragedy – Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty.
Your recent jeremiad argues that Jew-racism is exceptional and eternal. I share your warning against bigotry. My mother was often called Mrs Goldberg. When the president of a publishing company I headed asked if the P&L statement was “Jewish accounting,” I said nothing. I've lost count of the times I've seen people tap the side of their nose to suggest tact, a nose for a deal. However, I am surprised that you fail to recognize “our” tragedy, that the occupation has morally degraded Israeli society, and that successive Israeli governments have colluded to oppress the Palestinians, destroy their lives, their homes, and leave them with no chance. Justice or peace.
In fact, when the representation of life is remarkably lacking, you suspect the western media of propaganda. Gaza from October 7. I don't know where you were last weekend, but the epic column inches devoted to the Israeli victims on October 7th did not suggest a failure to give due credit to their suffering. Indeed, almost entirely missing, or at best seeming to be an afterthought, was any regard for the day's consequences for the Palestinians. This is not a call for a two-stroke – I take the view of Jacqueline Rose (one of your shameless Jews) that “equilibrium is a corrupt word in an unbalanced world”.
One should not ignore the horror of the October 7 atrocities No one should ignore the nightmare of families anxiously waiting for news of loved ones still held hostage in Gaza, a left-wing kibbutzim that Netanyahu and his allies have persistently and cynically ignored for the past 15 years. But Howard, I wonder how you can put to one side the 40,000-plus Gazans killed in the last 12 months because you're interested in what you describe as that ancient hatred.
“It's hateful to be accused of something you don't do, but even more hateful to be accused of something you don't dream of doing and can't bear to see done,” you write.. I wonder if you haven't noticed the TikTok efforts of proud IDF soldiers, the brutal treatment of Palestinians by religious fundamentalist settlers who Yoav Gallant calls “human animals,” or the obscene crimes against Palestinians in Sde Teiman prison in a state. It advertises itself as the only democracy in the region. The evidence seems to disprove your lofty notion that Jewish people are incapable of barbarism.
You seamlessly connect Judaism and Israel. I assume for you that the connection is obvious to the vast majority of Diaspora Jews. So, I assume you don't care to hold the current government accountable for their actions, and the sources of your article do not disagree. However, if the reality of the Israeli state today makes you uncomfortable, perhaps you should reconsider your allegiance to Zionism – instead of asking to enjoy your night vision without being exposed to its deadly manifestation in the form of crippled children. .
As old as the hatred that occupies you is the rhetorical question: Is this war on Gaza good for the Jews? I think not.
Yours, Louise
Louis Adler is a former publisher
