The Washington Post Omits Novelist’s Antisemitism

By Published On: July 28, 2011

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The Washington Post’s “Memoir Review” of Jose Saramago (“Deep Roots in Poor Soil,” July 3) omitted the novelist’s unhinged beliefs about Israel and Jews.

Reviewer Michael S. Roth painted a picture of a humble and intelligent man. But in 2003, when Palestinian terrorists of the second intifada were blowing up Israeli buses and cafes, murdering hundreds and maiming thousands, Saramago charged that Israel security checkpoints at Ramallah somehow resembled Holocaust-like repression.

“In the spirit of Auschwitz,” he orated, “this place is being turned into a concentration camp.” In fact, 2003 was the year in which Arab violence claimed the most Israeli lives since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

As for Jews in general, Saramago proclaimed, “they didn’t learn anything from the suffering [in the Holocaust] of their parents and grandparents.”

“Political bravery and artistic originality” with which The Post credited Saramago, or the old hatred in a new bottle? Would The Post have so indulged another artist who showed such prejudice toward any other national or religious group? — by Sophie Linshitz, CAMERA Washington research intern.

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