This is a guest post from Jonathan Hoffman

I wanted to amplify my earlier article about Tony Lerman‘s piece about self-haters.

I was astonished by Lerman’s misrepresentation of Robin Shepherd’s excellent, elegantly written new book, reviewed here recently:

And Robin Shepherd, of the Henry Jackson Society, in a thoroughly wrong-headed book out this month subtitled Europe’s Problem With Israel, uses the concept to explain why leftwing Jews “publicly turn against Israel”.

As Lerman pointed out in the thread (to ‘peterthehungarian’) Shepherd mentions ‘self-haters’ twice (pages 42-43 and 105). But in neither instance does he use the concept to explain why leftwing Jews “publicly turn against Israel”’.

On page 43 he says

Within the Jewish world today the accusation that Jews who publicly turn against Israel are motivated by self-hatred is commonplace. This may be part of the story. But there is another explanation … that could well be more convincing in most cases.

This “other explanation” is that their “radical Left identity” can come to be “of far greater importance than the one that…. they were born into.”

On page 105 he discusses those secular Diaspora Jews whose Jewish identity comes through an affinity with Israel. Anti-Zionist secular Diaspora Jews, Shepherd suggests, are

effectively positing for themselves a state of long-term conversion away from Judaism ….. They may or may not be self-hating Jews but they are certainly self-negating Jews.

He is certainly NOT using the “self-hate” concept “to explain why leftwing Jews “publicly turn against Israel”.

Lerman was completely wrong. He misrepresented Shepherd completely. And so was Matt Seaton wrong, for not agreeing to Shepherd’s request for a correction.

No surprise there whatsoever. They deserve each other.

Advertisement