I thought quite a while before deciding to write this item, because it deals with an online publication that is kind of a distant cousin to COMMENTARY. But after spending years calling out anti-Semitism committed primarily by paleoconservative publications and anti-Zionism on the part of liberal Jewish publications of a kind all but indistinguishable from anti-Semitism, I decided it would be improper for me to be silent on something published by Tablet. It is, without question, the most disgusting piece of anti-Semitism I think I’ve ever read outside of the arrant lunacy of schizophrenic letter writers, and the fact that it was written by a Jew trumpeting her connection to the Holocaust only makes it all the more repugnant.
You can find it here. I’m not going to quote from it, because to do so would be to provide a forum for words and sentences so noxious they hardly justify description. Suffice it to say that in an article taking off from the cable-TV series “Breaking Bad,” the contemptible author of this article denounces her Holocaust-survivor grandparents for fulfilling the Nazi perception of Jews, libels Elie Wiesel, and likens the survival of Jews in the camps to the behavior of a fictional gangster meth dealer.
How anyone at Tablet responsible for the acceptance and publication of this piece of evil filth—no other term will do—can look at herself or himself in the mirror today is a mystery that surpasseth understanding.
She will get her 5 minutes of fame and will be able to go on Hezbollah sponsored speaking tours in Lebanon, Gaza and Iran with Norman Finkelstein, Michael Weiss, Richard Silverstein, and Steven Walt.
Don't know who Michael Weiss is, though if he belongings in that grouping, I'm sure he is offensive. (You don't mean Phil "Mondoweiss" Weiss, do you?)
Woops. I meant Phillip Weiss.
Sociopathic seems a fitting description. Pretty shocking that anyone would think it's okay to print such a pathetic, hurtful, and bizarre column….
It's been a while since I have read anything so deprived and bereft of what they used to call human decency. Ms. Breslaw is morally debased and intellectually depraved.
and Tablet is a disgusting rag, trying too hard to be outside the box, fit for doggie poo collection n nWhy do people like David Goldman write for this crappy publication?
And so are a lot of young Jews, those that are so quick to attack their community and Israel, so anxious to distance themselves from defending their people. I guess a lot of them find a home at some of these alternative youth-oriented Jewish publications and websites. Of course, maybe they're just taking after their older models, the likes of Cardin, Schumer, Feinstein, Boxer who supported the anti-semite Hagel for Secretary of Defense. n nI wish they would all just leave the Jewish community and stop pretending to be Jewish. Their neuroses overcome their sense of anything positive about being Jewish.
I realize that this is a bit like reviewing the performance of "Our American Cousin" the night Lincoln was shot, but as reprehensible as her article so obviously is, even her thin pretense for writing it, her analysis of the TV show itself is wildly inaccurate. It's clear even in the show the main character's 'break bad' came before and had nothing to do with his decision to fight the cancer. No, this was an attempt to crowbar a plot point around her warped mental pathologies
Maybe the editor of The Tablet can fix her up on a date with George Soros. They deserve each other.
I stopped reading after the writer said she is estranged from her father after his having told her he hoped she'd keep him on life support indefinitely if he required it. Mr. Podhoretz rightly says she's evil, but that doesn't preclude the likelihood she's also mentally ill.
By using so incendiary an opinion as a justification to analyze a fictional television show, Breslaw exhibits that odd disassociation that is the hallmark of the current breed of armchair critic (and classic breed of psychotic); that she has a public forum in which to do so only compounds that psychosis with the warping intoxicant of fame.r nr nHer article betrays the arrogance of someone removed from the reality of which she so callously takes to task. And while she may speak credibly about her own trauma suffered as a child of Holocaust survivors (several of whom I know personally and who can attest to a very real ordeal) it does not nor can it ever approach the levels of terror endured by the survivors themselves. r nr nOn one level, she shows a kind of courage in speaking her inside voice aloud in a world where she surely knows the likely repercussions of her opinion. But she, like so many who choose to criticize Jewishness, the Holocaust and Israel in loud and often derisive ways, ignores the context in which those subjects exist and which should not therefore be subject to conventional criticism.r nr nThere is an argument to be made that actually experiencing devastating trauma is the only way to know its truth and is therefore something to be wished upon a person who lives his or her life terminally unaware of their own arrogant disregard for the suffering of the people they would chastise. But then, that would be as inappropriate and sociopathic as the behavior exhibited by Ms. Breslaw.
Much to my regret I clicked on the link to see what you were talking about. I couldn't even get half way thru the article. I'm proud to say that at 70 trash still disgusts me. I now understand why you agonized over giving this reprehensible being any more publicity. I can't begin to fathom what my reaction would be if I were a Jew, but as a Christian I am sickened and saddened that our society produces such warped misanthropes. God willing they will forever remain a small ignored subset of the human race.
Thank you. n nIt is objectively anti-human and especially anti-semitic, but it seems to me that the author is simply an anti-human sociopath and isn't even capable of being subjectively anti-semitic per se. Without discussing the details, which as you say are too noxious to deserve description, think about what she says about her father. Does she hate him because he's Jewish? No, she hates him because he would dare to inconvenience someone as fabulous as herself by his preference not to be treated like a dog by his own family.
Well, she's a self-loathing Jew, and in her case, there's a lot to loathe.
And here I thought that Tablet was supposed to be a reasonable and moderate publication. n nSilly me.
Tablet is garbage
I don't agree that it's antisemitic. I do agree that it's depraved and sociopathic, and, mostly, idiotic.
I tend to agree with you, Breslaw strikes me as a whining and deeply unhappy woman who writes insipid and childish nonsense. As to being depraved and sociopathic, perhaps, but maybe more just immature and inexperienced. As if it matters, I stopped reading the puerile and badly thought out commentary on Tablet long ago.
Were I an emotionally unstable child of Holocaust survivors I might have gone crazy. And make no mistake, there’s plenty of climbing the wall craziness in the essay. But denouncing what amounts to a highly claustrophobic Jewish writer’s panic attack as “evil filth” seems over the top. What’s offensive to me is her editor’s apparent exploitation of her marginal personality to sell copy. Anyway I’m not ready to lump the author with Goebbels unless it turns out she’s making a career of it.
interesting….I clicked on the link and there is a message that reads that the website is now offline….. neither a million Commentary readers have clicked it and we have crashed the site or they've taken down the piece….either way, it's gone!
But the link still works …____@dcdoc1__Norman Finkelstein (surprisingly) a few months ago said very clearly what the BDS movement is: __a bigoted and "sectarian" antisemitic movement who's goal is the destruction of Israel (as a Jewish state), and this was reported on many Jewish and pro Israeli websites.____But that's the only of "his subject's thinking" that "has come to be widely accepted in the Jewish community", as Tablet wrote – and surely not his continued mockery of the Holocaust and all his other blatant lies. So Tablet at least should specify.____
As of now there is
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/106729/responding-to-readers
“Responding to Readers
On Anna Breslaw, survivors, and Tablet”
by Alana Newhouse.
I read the piece and tend to agree with those who say that this is mentally twisted woman incapable of caring or having empathy for anyone else. It is offensively, whiningly, narcissistic and a great example of why narcissists can be so destructive. One need not be Jewish to be made sick by this repugnant display of callous self centeredness by a woman who clearly believes that there is something wrong with a world in which she is not the sole object of attention and in which other people do not devote their every waking hour to her happiness. That Tablet published this piece of drivel supports Tammy Bruce's contentions that most liberals suffer from malignant narcissism.
Absolutely. Narcissism and high self-regard is endemic among the left. Just look at Obama and his demand for attention and subservience. n nThis young wman should learn that there is no room for the grandiose narcissist in foxholes…or in the death camps.
Thank you, John, for addressing this latest bit of twisted nonsense from one of our own Evil Daughters. You can find my response to it as one of the "comments" below Anna Breslow's piece. I contend that we are producing Evil Sons and Daughters at an alarming clip, for reasons that are never spoken about, and this has now reached the level of an epidemic, a plague. Either we do something about it—now—or it could lead us over a cliff once again. The world does not forgive the kinds of things we Jews are allowing our children (of all ages) to do—i.e., the Jewish left is destructive, supports destructiveness, and resembles nothing so much as an enraged child, lashing out at its parents for their sin of: not giving him/her what he/she demands! This is a plague of out of control narcissistic Jewish kids, and they're dangerous. They say and do things that, cumulatively, plant the seeds of Jew-hatred in the minds of both Jews and non-Jews, and they provide justification for the irrational, sadistic hatreds of our enemies. n nWe either shut them up, by whatever means necessary, or we will soon enough find ourselves persona non grata even here in our home—the US, which has sheltered and embraced us for over 250 years.
And you call Ms. Breslaw a threat? Your threat to abridge the First Amendment rights of Jews "by whatever means necessary" is much more disgraceful than anything Ms. Brewslaw wrote. You obviously either never took or didn't understood high school civics. Your comments are un-American.
A letter I wrote to annabreslaw@gmail.com: nanna, nI am so glad to discover a fellow Jewish Jew hater. To think I could be alone in such a Jew-dominated city was a bit claustrophobic. As the economy has gotten worse I have worried that I wouldn't have a fellow Kapo to assist me in disposing of all the Jews killed by the next wave of neo-nazis. But now I have you to laugh and drink with in celebration of your parents' death. Can't wait! Perhaps, an Iranian nuclear bomb gets through to Israel and we can celebrate even more!! That would be awesome wouldn't it? I bet you are getting wet just thinking about the possibilities! Come on, don't lie! Such massive death of Jews has got to be arousing to you. Perhaps you can write about it in Playboy or the Times would print it. The Times seems to love anti-Jew articles; no matter how poorly the writer writes. Anti-Israel? Anti-Semite? okay, you are in!! I propose you take your hate and start a National "Hate Your Fellow Jew" day. You can invite Max Blumenthal, Michael Lerner, Norm Finkelstein and the entire cast of J Street. You can have busts of Hitler, Himmler and Eichmann carried on floats shaped like VW Beetles. And you can even dress up like Ann Frank since you already have that costume in your possession. Hate is such a disease, don't you agree? It eats away at your very core and turns a human into an animal. Look at the Arabs! They hate and act like animals; neither caring for their own nor their neighbors. You would fit in with them just fine. You hate yourself and you hate Jews. I was able to pretend until this second but the hate just gets at me. How do you do it? How do you keep the hate for so long? You must be an incredible woman with incredible resolve. You can hate for all the wrong reasons and never accept that others can hate for no reason at all. You anna breslaw are an embarrassment and fool. I just wish you kept your idiocy confined to your own head. nMichael
A letter I wrote to annabreslow@gmail.com: nanna, nI am so glad to discover a fellow Jewish Jew hater. To think I could be alone in such a Jew-dominated city was a bit claustrophobic. As the economy has gotten worse I have worried that I wouldn't have a fellow Kapo to assist me in disposing of all the Jews killed by the next wave of neo-nazis. But now I have you to laugh and drink with in celebration of your parents' death. Can't wait! Perhaps, an Iranian nuclear bomb gets through to Israel and we can celebrate even more!! That would be awesome wouldn't it? I bet you are getting wet just thinking about the possibilities! Come on, don't lie! Such massive death of Jews has got to be arousing to you. Perhaps you can write about it in Playboy or the Times would print it. The Times seems to love anti-Jew articles; no matter how poorly the writer writes. Anti-Israel? Anti-Semite? okay, you are in!! I propose you take your hate and start a National "Hate Your Fellow Jew" day. You can invite Max Blumenthal, Michael Lerner, Norm Finkelstein and the entire cast of J Street. You can have busts of Hitler, Himmler and Eichmann carried on floats shaped like VW Beetles. And you can even dress up like Ann Frank since you already have that costume in your possession. Hate is such a disease, don't you agree? It eats away at your very core and turns a human into an animal. Look at the Arabs! They hate and act like animals; neither caring for their own nor their neighbors. You would fit in with them just fine. You hate yourself and you hate Jews. I was able to pretend until this second but the hate just gets at me. How do you do it? How do you keep the hate for so long? You must be an incredible woman with incredible resolve. You can hate for all the wrong reasons and never accept that others can hate for no reason at all. You anna breslaw are an embarrassment and fool. I just wish you kept your idiocy confined to your own head.
Recently, Tablet published an interview of Norman Finkelstein by its literary editor. Not too surprisingly given the interviewee, It was a pretty dreadful and strange piece, with the claim made by the interviewer that his subject's thinking has come to be widely accepted in the Jewish community(?!). The comments that followed included a number of unabashedly antisemitc ones mocking the Holocaust. I thought for sure Tablet's editors would not want to leave that sort of thing on their website when they were called to its attention, but when I complained to them, I was met with complete indifference. So it seems the "sensibilities" of those who put Tablet together are very different when it comes to this sort of thing.
I think this should have been rejected because it is so poorly written. Look at that clunky first sentence.
I would think that this "piece" should have been rejected because it is so poorly written and is short on coherent thoughts. Look at that clunker of a first sentence!
she is a morally poor delusional self hating misanthrope doing what she can to curry favor with the nneo nazis and radical islamic groups. nIf ever a person was seriously in need of psychiatric help it is this very sick woman. nThis literary shit for the masses will find its audience in the herds of anti semitic psychopaths nno doubt as intended but the stain on her character is irreversible and deep, as permanent as the nnumbers tattooed on the victims of the Holocaust that she so crudely mocks and derides. nHer shameful diatribe is bad enough from any thinking human, but from a jew it is pure evil sacrilege. n
The comments over there speak volumes. Tablet bills itself as "the daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture". The editors must have been so taken up with "Breaking Bad" that they didn't see her bias. According to her bio there, she's a "contributor to Jezebel: Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing". n nOn the other hand, it's useful to know that her type of thinking still exists. n nAs for me, I've read Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning".
I think Jezebel might be one of those twisted sicko websites owned and run by Nick Denton. Some of his other websites, like Gawker, have trafficked in anti-semitism. If I'm wrong about the site Jezebel, please correct me.
"I Was Anne Frank For Haloween." n nThe execrable Anna Breslaw concludes this disgusting little vignette with a mocking reference to Anne Frank's signature sentment: "But it’s cool, because despite everything I believed the cowgirl and the Blues Brothers were truly good at heart. n nI am reminded of the actress Audrey Hepburn, who spoke of living with the painful memory of watching the deportation of Jewish children from her small town in Holland. Hepburn felt a bond with those children for the rest of her life — and especially with Anne Frank, who was her own age. n nHepburn's attitude bespeaks a common decency, and decency is what appears to be entirely lacking in Breslaw, and in the facile, jejune defense of her piece by Adam Chandler. n n n n n n n n n n n
Recently Deborah Wasserman Schultz came to the defense of Dani Gilbert, who was appointed as the "Jewish outreach liaison for the Democratic National Committee", no less. This, after news broke that Gilbert once posted a photo on Facebook of her and friends holding up cash; the caption on the photo said “Jewbags.” n nThese events, and many others like them, point incontestibly to a crisis of values in the American Jewish community. n n
I wish there were some way for Commentary to let us avoid going to Tablet, for the cynical calculus of Websites is, that provocative articles — no matter how despicable — garner page views, which is the currency of the commercial Web. n nThis author evokes the image of a precocious sixteen-year-old holding forth on things she has no competence to judge. Which would be forgivable in a child but reprehensible in a nominal adult. That this was published says as much about Tablet as the author. n nIt's rich that she speaks of the Soprano's normalized violence, since, as a product of provincial, self-referential, neurotic, dystopian Brooklyn, New York, she seems to believe, as apparently does Tablet, that her perverted and sophomoric world view is normal, yea wise.
"This author evokes the image of a precocious sixteen-year-old holding forth on things she has no competence to judge. Which would be forgivable in a child but reprehensible in a nominal adult. " nThat's about normal for Tablet. This article may have hit a new low for tolerance of anti-Semitism, but sadly it is not a new low for their shallow analysis and look-at-me attitude.
How absolutely disgusting. How this woman can even say such a thing coming from the very religion that were almost wiped out in Europe is beyond me. I will not read this at all.
Tablet’s home page has a drawing/cartoon? of what I suppose is meant to be Israel’s security wall
http://www.tabletmag.com/author/amy-klein
but my immediate impression given the attempt to damn Israel as an Apartheid state was to read “separation wall” in that sense.
So what is Tablet’s overall agenda; to damn Jews once more to dhimmi status?
Mr. Podhoretz as many free-thinking sober Jews wage the noble but extremely hard war for the Jewish Israeli future against the masses of Diasphora Jews whose twitter we read everywhere. nCan they be freed from themselves?
That’s nothing. I hear she wants to date Bill Maher.
lol n nshe would have to be black
That's nothing. I hear she wants to date Bill Maher.
"Since I was 12 I’ve had an unappealing, didactic distrust of people with the extreme will to live." n nDidactic distrust. Obviously she can't resist alliteration, no matter how nonsensical. n nFor me, the essence, indeed the great normative message, of Judaism is that life is the supreme value. "I am that I am." If this value were universal, then humans would indeed be transcendent beings. Thanks to Judaism's sanctification of life, humanity has emerged, albeit kicking and screaming, from brutishness. n nLife needs no justification, it is its own justification. A long life IS a good life. (Yes, considering that some monsters live long, we can certainly respond, A good life for whom?) n nNew York, Germany and other insular societies are dark and self-absorbed. They turn death into an æsthetic, witness the appeal of the Mapplethorpe school to New Yorkers and Germans, consider that Nazism was murder in the service of an æsthetic. Consider Anna Breslaw's revulsion at Judaism's worship of life, and you arrive at an exquisite fusion of Gothamite and German nihilism. n nGeneral Patton made the point, that in war the object is not to die for your country but to make the enemy die for his. Even an anti-Semite like Patton had his priorities right, which is more than one can say about Breslaw and Tablet.
Thank you for this thoughtful contribution and the earlier one. One can dismiss Ms. Breslaw as loathsome and "credit" Tablet for showcasing her scheiße, letting it go at that, but you have put her and her publisher in a larger, darker context.
And, yes, it is quite remarkable that "since (she) was 12, (she has) had an unappealing, didactic distrust with the extreme will to live." (italics added) I don't know what it is to have a "didactic distrust" of anything, let alone an " unappealing, didactic distrust" one. (Her own distrust of "people with the extreme will to live" was "unappealing" to her, so she regretted it, or she realizes that it made her "unappealing" to others?) I do know, though, that I would never, ever make her my health care surrogate, trusting her to make life-and-death decisions on my behalf. Indeed, I would not permit her to visit me in the hospital lest she see and take an opportunity to open or close the stopcock on an IV, pull a plug, or otherwise act on her wish not to see lives continue beyond when she thinks they should come to an end. If you were her parent, would you repose trust in her to do the morally right thing in such circumstances, or in any circumstances? n nCan you imagine the painfulness of having a child like Ms. Breslaw?
I think it was Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt who walked into a protest center in the 60s. One turned to the other and said, "Looking at them makes me think they must have been great disappointments to their parents." n n
why is she still alive?
You have to admit her take on natural selection is novel. Survival of the shittiest.
I do not agree that this is anti-Semitism. The author is devoid of human feelings. That is her defect, whether the subject is Jewish or not.