Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Richard Landes comments on a fascinating interview with former Italian radical Leftist author Fiamma Nirenstein regarding her new book, Israele Siamo Noi [Israel Is Us]: Israele Siamo Noi: Italy’s New Bestseller?.
Nirenstein does this, she explains, by dissecting what she calls the “sick words†that have infiltrated the language and consciousness of an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe - terms she and a group of Italian academics plan on collecting for a glossary, “because such word abuse prevents even the possibility of understanding what Israel is all about.â€
She comes by her passion for Israel - and familiarity with the conceptual distortions characteristic of “autocratic ideologies†- honestly. The daughter of Holocaust historian and long-time Al Hamishmar correspondent Aharon “Nir†Nirenstein (who came to Palestine in 1936 from Poland, and went to Italy in 1945 with the Jewish Brigade) and Corriere della Sera journalist Wanda Lattes, Nirenstein was an ardent communist in her youth. And, just as Zionism was part and parcel of her upbringing, so too, she says, was she caught up in the “mental corruption†that caused her generation to look to the likes of Che Guevara for inspiration, while attributing the world’s ills to “capitalist imperialism.â€...
Lots of other new posts there as well.
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