In his moving article in Vanity Fair about his cancer, Christopher Hitchens disclosed that just before he went on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he violently threw up — the result of the illness he had learned about that morning, when he woke unable to breathe, was barely able to cross his hotel room to call for help, and was saved by emergency treatment by doctors who did “quite a lot” of work on his heart and lungs and told him he needed to consult an oncologist immediately.
That evening he nevertheless appeared as scheduled on Stewart’s show (and then at the 92nd Street Y, where he threw up again), unwilling to disappoint his friends or miss the chance to sell his memoir. In the article, he did not describe what he said on The Daily Show, but his appearance there is worth remembering for reasons going beyond his extraordinary fortitude in proceeding with it.
The video is here. At the end, after discussing his work in a camp for revolutionaries in Cuba in the 60s, there was this colloquy:
Stewart: If you had been young today, going through this same sort of [unintelligible], where do you think your alliances would be, where do you think you would have—
Hitchens: Well, I teach at the New School, and I teach English and a lot of journalists and would-be journalists come, and I often hang out with young people who are journalists, and I’m sorry for them, in a way. Because what are they gonna do – I mean, are they going to say ‘I’m a global warming activist’? It’s not quite the same, is it?
Stewart: Isn’t it all the same once you realize that your idealism — you can use it to further your aims, [if] you realize that nothing is nirvana, nothing is perfect?
Hitchens: Oscar Wilde used to say that a map of the world that doesn’t include Utopia isn’t worth looking at. I used to think that was a beautiful statement. I don’t think that at all anymore. I tell you, to be honest, the most idealistic and brave and committed and intelligent young people that I know have joined the armed forces. And they are now guarding us while we sleep in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. … I never would have expected that would be what I would say about the students I have to teach.
Stewart’s audience, which is often raucous, listened to this in silence.
Hitchens writes in Hitch-22 that these days he thinks about “the shipwrecks and prison islands to which the quest [for Utopia] has led” and that he came to realize that “the only historical revolution with any verve left in it, or any example to offer others, was the American one.” His appearance on the Daily Show was an example not only of his physical courage but also of the intellectual audacity that pervades his book.
I don’t have links at my fingertips, but I believe that the genealogy community has spoken to this issue.
Yes, Commentary knows a lot about denial. Tell us again how 700,000 Palestinians “voluntarily fled” their homes in 1948?
I’m not familiar with Prof. Sand’s work, but it seems as if he’s arguing a position very similar to Charles Torrey.
In response, I would point to the following reference (among others):
Oded Lipschits, “Demographic Changes in Judah between the 7th and the 5th Centuries BCE.” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (Proceedings of the Conference held in Tel Aviv University, May 2001), eds. O. Lipschits and J. Blenkinsopp, (Winoa-Lake, 2003): 323-376.
Through an extremely thorough (and I mean REALLY dense) examination of the archaeological evidence – independent from the Biblical material – Lipschits finds data that fit well with the Biblical data. In other words, although it is true that the territory of Benjamin, as well as in the Northern Judean highlands was never depopulated (at least until the Persian period), the territory in and around Jerusalem, as well as the southern highlands, was, in fact, almost completely depopulated starting from the beginning of the 6th century B.C.E. (and thus right around the Biblical date for the exile, 586 B.C.E.). Furthermore, the entire area was rejuvenated (although to a much lesser extent than before 586) near the beginning of the Persian period, which coincides nicely with the “Return to Zion” (Shivat Tsion) spoken of in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, etc.
So what I hear him saying is that the Palestinians are the legitimate Jews who own Israel by birthright? That would explain the somewhat stiffnecked predisposition I suppose.
dina robert….Your silly comment does not even deserve an answer. However, Ill be charitable and assume you are just ignorant, not bigoted. You can find the answer to your quesiton in the commentary of July that addresses your question rather well.
Actually, it is MAY and the author is Efraim karsh.
I’d like to see actual research cited here, rather than ad-hominem attacks. Let’s get a consensus as to what is factual and what is not.
My views are not set in stone, but there are things I am not ready to take at face value.