Casual
PODHORETZ, JOHN
Casual WATCHING THE INVECTIVE I write a newspaper column, to which I append my e-mail address. For the most part, it's a joy to get reader reaction, pro and con. The pro mail makes you feel...
...I began receiving e-mail that can only be described as Jew-hating in the extreme...
...or at least, that's what I want them to think...
...You can be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic," they say...
...About two years ago, something changed...
...They are well written and poorly written, stupid and clever, Buchananite and leftist, European and American...
...Why sink to his level...
...I decided that I would not let these foul words go unremarked upon, that to do so would be to act as though it were acceptable to write and speak in this manner...
...I finally lost it...
...So I have, from time to time, engaged in bizarre correspondences...
...You are a speck of s— dumped by a chihuahua outside a half-wide in your miserable little trailer park of a soul...
...Then, last week, in response to a column in which I suggested Peter Arnett might be guilty of treason, I received the following: "Actually, Pod-whore-etz, if this were the America of our forebears, you would have been propped up against a wall and shot for treason years ago...
...When I write back to the e-mailers and say they have crossed a line by hurling the classic anti-Semitic accusation that Jews can never be true countrymen, they often respond with anger...
...A floodgate has opened, and while the brackish water is pouring mainly on the heads of Israelis and Paul Wolfowitz, a tributary flows regularly into my inbox as well...
...Such mail, when it's delivered not by the Internet but the Postal Service, is usually so delusional that there's nothing all that worrisome about it...
...These seem to come primarily from angry white males...
...Some of them are of the traditional "why don't you go back to Israel where you belong" variety, ripe with accusations of dual loyalty...
...In the past year alone, I've received at least 200 anti-Semitic e-mails...
...But in terms of sheer numbers, the outpouring of a hatred whose capacity for murderous carnage became everywhere known only six decades ago is staggering...
...That's certainly true...
...The pro mail makes you feel wonderful and the con makes you feel like you've at least disturbed the comfortable thought processes of people who disagree with you...
...I have a new insight into why Jews have gotten into so much trouble everywhere they have lived...
...My wife was furious with me when she found out I'd done this...
...But I've noticed that almost everybody who invokes this argument on his own behalf is, in fact, an anti-Semite...
...Filthy Jew Kikes Murder American College Girl" was how he described it...
...Maybe I will get together with my pals in the Elders of Zion and cancel all their bank accounts, ruin their credit ratings, and seize their lands through the mysterious power of usury...
...Then there are the e-mails that basically accuse me, my family, and the Jewish people in general of defiling the earth...
...I say this only because the writers make a point of complaining about how they're angry, white, and male...
...He deserves nothing but silence, and that is what his kind will get from me from now on...
...The e-mailers clearly feel their anger is righteous—that they are defending their nation or the Palestinian people from a dangerous force that seeks to undermine America and kill innocent women and children...
...I wish that all Zionist [sic] like you would emigrate to the Fatherland ASAP," writes one frequent pen pal...
...JOHN PODHORETZ...
...After seeing the emergence of the American Zionists...
...The act of responding with vicious invective gave me the tiniest sense that I wasn't simply letting this man's evil go unanswered...
...But she was right, of course...
...I note that the people who send these e-mails often have a very poor command of rudimentary grammar and spelling, so I will at times suggest they should attend first grade again before they try and put their thoughts to paper...
...It disgusts me that dual agents like you have so much power here...
...He could be dangerous...
...It's evil...
...The same creep had e-mailed me a news story about Rachel Corrie, the pro-Palestinian activist who fell down and was run over by an Israeli bulldozer...
...That'd teach 'em...
...I stopped arguing with people like this...
...I would instead send them an Amazon link to Mein Kampf with a note saying I'd found their favorite book on the Internet...
...Nobody would bother to shoot you for anything," I wrote back...
...The e-mail I've been receiving isn't delusional...
...Those e-mailers seem almost quaint by comparison with the ones who liken Israel to Nazi Germany and dub Jews "Zionazis...
...Now, anti-Semitic mail is nothing new for me or any other writer with a Jewish-sounding name...
Vol. 8 • April 2003 • No. 31
