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Decter and Podhoretz

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from: Norman Podhoretz

Re: Speaking Ill of the Dead

Posted Monday, Feb. 8, 1999, at 2:29 PM ET

Obviously he was a genius at that. But though you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, certainly not the day after they die, I can't help feeling that his reputation is a fraud. Remember what he did when he occupied East Jerusalem before 1967? To take only one example, he permitted the uprooting of gravestones from an ancient Jewish cemetery to be used as paving stones. He destroyed the Jewish quarter in old Jerusalem, and refused to allow pious Jews in to pray at the Wailing Wall. Then, despite secret pleas from the Israelis to stay out of the 1967 war, he joined his "Arab brothers" in a campaign to wipe Israel off the map and "drive its Jewish inhabitants into the sea," as Egypt's Nasser exquisitely put it. Yes, that was a long time ago, but as recently as 1991, King Hussein sided with Saddam Hussein against us in the Gulf War. He also--as hardly anyone knows--provided technical assistance to the Iraqis in guiding their missiles toward Israel as they passed over Jordanian territory. Even more recently, after the Palestinians started breaking the agreements they had made with Israel at Oslo, and even resorted to armed conflict whenever the negotiations went too slowly to suit them, it was Netanyahu rather than Arafat the "little King" blamed, threatening him with war. Nevertheless, excuses were always made for Hussein's reprehensible behavior, and now he's being treated as a combination of Mother Teresa and Thomas Jefferson. You may be dry-eyed, but the whole business makes me sick.

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Norman Podhoretz

Re: Speaking Ill of the Dead

Posted Monday, Feb. 8, 1999, at 2:29 PM ET
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Midge Decter is an essayist and social critic who publishes in a variety of magazines and appears most frequently in Commentary. Norman Podhoretz is editor at large of Commentary magazine and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. His latest book, Ex-Friends, was published this month.
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