Why Richard Cohen should be fired today

Suppose a famous columnist for the Washington Post wrote the following:

Black Harlem is a mistake. It just arose from Southern Blacks who migrated to New York City a century ago. It would be better if it never existed.

or

The Gay community of San Francisco is a mistake. It just came from hundreds of thousands of Gays moving to California to feel free to be themselves. Better if they were dead.

or

The country of Pakistan is a mistake. Four million people were killed in the Partition of 1948 to create a Muslim Pakistan. Now Pakistan has nukes and is a danger to India. It would be better had it never existed.

Or how about this?

Muslim—majority Lebanon is a mistake. Until a few decades ago, Lebanon was majority Christian. Better if they were all dead.

Or:

Two million Pakistani Londoners are a mistake. They should be in Lahore, where they belong.

Or:

Jewish New York is a mistake. The grandparents of today's Jews should have stayed in Poland, Russia and Germany.

Such a famous WaPo columnist would be out of a job the next day. Just as Harvard's President was fired simply for wondering in public why there are so few first—rate female mathematicians and Nobel—winning scientists.

But Richard Cohen still has his job today after writing

QUOTE:  "The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. " 

As you read this, every Embassy in Washington DC is sending that line home to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and to all their jihadi friends back home.

Now, nobody is trying to kill all the Black people in Harlem, or all the Muslims in Pakistan, or all the Jews in New York. Somebody is trying to kill all the Jews in Israel. Today  his name is Ahmadinejad, but before that his name was Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Yasser Arafat.

It's a lot more malevolent to call the existence of six million people "a mistake" if somebody is actually trying to wipe them out with terrorist bombs ——— and soon,  nuclear weapons.

OK: What gives Cohen the right to encourage the genocidal enemies of Israel in a time of hot war, when innocents are getting killed every hour, and when he knows that his words will be read and repeated times around the world?

Forget Cohen's last name. It wouldn't make any difference if it was Smith or Schicklgruber. But it might be a lot more understandable.

During the Hitler Holocaust the expression "self—hating Jew" became part of the vocabulary of history. It is a terrifying expression, as horrific as "house slave" in the antebellum South.

Today, the German expression "Juedisches Selbst—Hass" has come to haunt civilization again.

Thank you, Mr. Cohen. And thank you, Washington Post.

There are people, unfortunately, who do evil. And then there are those who encourage them by word and deed. In common law and in common decency the enablers are as bad as the evil doers.

Thank you, Mr. Cohen. And thank you, Washington Post.

James Lewis   7 18 06

Update: Bookworm differs somewhat. She finds Cohen an inartful writer, but not an anti—Semite.