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Sunday, October 20, 2002
Back to the Amsterdam News and Amiri Baraka(nee Leroi Jones), focusing on this week's editorial. The controversy about Baraka's poem, "Somebody Blew Up America" has now grown to the point where Jersey's Governor McGreevey is seeking legislation to allow him to fire Baraka as the state's poet laureate, which is supposed to be an inviolable two-year term. The following stanza is the one causing all the uproar: Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away ?
The ADL launched on this in a letter to McGreevey, and assembled a webpage that supposedly compiles anti-Semitic statements by Baraka. Firstly, it's worth noting that Baraka's poem, which is more than 60 stanzas long, contains numerous references to Jewish suffering, in addition to several mentions of an idea of Zionist/American imperialism. He makes a distinction within the poem between Jews and Israel.
The ADL, in assembling Baraka's statements, does not make the same distinction: All of Baraka's statements post-1980 (when he authored a piece in the Village Voiceentitled "Confessions of a Former Anti-Semite") are decidedly anti-Zionist, but characterizing them as anti-Semitic is a huge stretch, especially given this one that the ADL cites:* "Farrakhan must distinguish between Judaism and Zionism. It is the Zionists who control Israel and have the most influence now in the Jewish bourgeoisie in the U.S. (and South Africa), not the religion."
-- Forward: Journal of Socialist Thought, January 1985
If Baraka is going to make that distinction, it is only fair that those who would argue with him do so as well. According to the Jewish Week, he excised the stanza in all subsequent readings after he was booed at the Dodge Poetry Festival; this may mean that he realizes he was in error, maybe not. I've sent an e-mail to the only address listed on his website, but won't be too optimistic about hearing back from him, since it's not too clear that the e-mail will actually get to Baraka himself.
The Jewish Week piece deserves a good read-through, as does his Voice piece (no link, but I'll be checking it out on Lexis). The ADL and others want to make this out to be part of a growing trend of Anti-Semitism on the far left; it appears that even a quick glance at their assembled quotes on Baraka will leave them disappointed.
However, the Amsterdam News makes no Baraka-like distinction, blaming the outcry against him solely upon "the Jews". But I'm not sure that anyone even thought that the Amsterdam News' current leadership is anything but anti-Semitic after its "Jewish mafia" comments last year.
Interested for reader comment on this, so send them in.
UPDATE: I missed the killer Baraka quote that is, again, listed in the ADL's list of supposed anti-Semitic statements: Talking about himself in the present (i.e. supposedly after overcoming his own anti-Semitism), Baraka continued, "Another important aspect of the anti-Semite tag is my opposition to Zionism. In my view…Zionism is a form of racism. It is a political ideology that hides behind the Jewish religion and the Jewish people, while performing its negative tasks for imperialism. A favorite game of Zionists is to drop the label 'anti-Semitic' on anyone who opposes Zionism or upholds the Palestinians' right of self-determination…For here is a people with the murders of millions of their brothers and sisters still fresh in their memories who now function as imperialist watchdogs in the Middle East!"
Steven I. Weiss 10:27:00 AM
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