‘Of Mice and Men,’ Indeed

At a TED Talk at the English city of Nottingham recently, a hijab’d young woman gloated beatifically over the removal of “bad” books from the syllabus of the school with which she is affiliated, saying:“We refined the English curriculum to provide students with a more representative approach to the literature they studied. We’ve replaced controversial books by white male authors, such as ‘Of Mice and Men’ and ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,’ with pieces of literature that celebrate a diverse array of authors and themes.” The books she mentions — which have replaced these two very different novels — are “The Bone Sparrow” and “The Alchemist.” The first is the story of a Muslim Rohingya child living in a detention camp in China, the second glorifies Islam. So much for diversity.You wouldn’t think that anyone could envy a people for suffering genocide, but in recent years the attempts to wrest the concept away from those pesky Jews and apply it to any old conflict has become increasingly popular.First-edition dust jacket cover of John Steinbeck’s novel ‘Of Mice and Men,’ published in 1937. Via Wikimedia CommonsMany on the Left — in cahoots with Islamists — would very much like to minimize Holocaust education and memorials in the UK as they believe that the 6 million Jews murdered didn’t score high enough on what I think of as the Paint Chart Persecution scale.There is an increasingly influential and highly sinister school of thought which attempts to reframe the Holocaust as a bit of white-on-white trouble, quite like the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland, parroting the line that it “isn’t about race,” as Whoopi Goldberg put it two years ago.It’s only going to get worse. Some years back I coined the phrase “fresh’n’funky antisemitism” to define a new strain of the disease, which had broken free of its stale, pale, male origins and become quite the belle of the campus ball.We’re often told that young people are less prejudiced, so it was somewhat surprising when polls in both the United Kingdom and the United States earlier this year on antisemitic attitudes found the poison most prevalent in the young.Author John Steinbeck, right, and his son, Thomas Steinbeck, at Hartford, Connecticut, March 22, 1963. AP Photo, FileThis TED talker is one such golden child, full of hope for the future — and utter contempt for the past, especially if it shows Jews as victims of racial hatred. Neither John Steinbeck nor John Boyne are Jewish, but their writing shows empathy with the Jewish people.“This country boils and burbles,” Steinbeck enthused to his editor at New York Newsday in 1966 on first visiting Israel, “and gallops with energy” — and for this they must be punished and excised.Of course, the ultimate aim of the diversity merchants isn’t diversity at all, but a desire to make everyone sing from the same hymn-sheet, albeit one with a lot of wailing and no decent tunes.There is an old Jewish saying: the antisemite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence.I don’t buy the line that most antisemites truly believe the Holocaust never happened, despite the claims that one in five young Americans think so in a poll carried out by the Economist/YouGov last year.I believe that they know fully well what happened, and get a thrill from seeing Jews and their allies plead with them to look at the evidence. This truly is the ultimate behavior of what I defined as the Cry-Bully; one who pleads persecution while persecuting others.Nottingham is known for the legend of the outlaw Robin Hood, who took from the rich and gave to the poor; with a population of 40,000 Muslims and only 600 Jews, this TED talk was a low, dishonest display of taking from the persecuted in British society (antisemitic hate-crimes more than doubled in the first half of this year, reaching an all-time high) to further the cause of an increasingly dominant group.At this week’s big boxing match at the iconic Wembley Stadium, the Saudi national anthem was played, though both the fighters are British, as the ongoing attempt at ‘sports-washing’ by the Saudi regime continues.As the world’s only Jewish state gears up to fight for its survival, it’s shocking — but never surprising — that the monstrous regiments of Western antisemites intent on inflicting to the Jewish people death by a thousand cuts are tireless in their efforts to destroy not just the present and the future of the Jews — but also the past.

‘Of Mice and Men,’ Indeed

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