WHY NATALIE PORTMAN IS SMARTER THAN ANTON RIVIERA, and the rest of the racist left:
On Wednesday, the Jerusalem-born actress objected tartly in the Harvard Crimson to law student Faisal Chaudhry’s April 11 essay on U.S. policy concerning Israel and the Palestinians. Chaudhry framed the Arab-Israeli violence as “Israel’s racist colonial occupation” in which “white Israeli soldiers destroy refugee camps of the brown people they have dispossessed for decades.”
Portman, who immigrated to the United States with her family in 1988 and lived briefly in Washington, wrote to the student newspaper that Chaudhry’s racial rhetoric “is a distortion of the fact that most Israelis and Palestinians are indistinguishable physically. The Israeli government itself is comprised of a great number of Sephardic Jews, many of whom originate from Arab countries. The chief of staff of the army, the minister of defense, the minister of finance . . . and the president of Israel are all ‘brown.’ One might have an idea of the physical likeness between Arabs and Israelis by examining this week’s Newsweek cover on which an 18-year-old female Palestinian suicide bomber and her 17-year-old female Israeli victim could pass for twins.”
Portman continued: “Outrageous and untrue finger-pointing is a childish tactic that disregards the responsibility of all parties involved.”
For too many on the Left, “racist” has simply become a synonym for anything they don’t like — the same role that the word “fascist” played for a long time, until the Left began sucking up to the genuinely fascist regimes of Arafat, Saddam, and Qaddafi for lack of any other anti-American regimes to adhere to. It is thus impossible for them to imagine a war that they disapprove of that isn’t, somehow, racist. Of course, Portman’s letter drew this logical and factual response: “Yesterday the 25-year-old Chaudhry speculated that the Crimson published the letter only because Portman is a movie star.”
I don’t think it’s good that the antiwar left is morally and intellectually bankrupt. I think it’s bad. But I think it needs to be pointed out, so as to facilitate change and growth.