Opinion piece on Tony Judt and debates over Israel in New York media

Article 1. NYT The Tony Awards Roger Cohen May 12, 2011— Every few years along comes a brilliant Jewish writer called Tony with challenging views on Israel, and this great city — on all other matters the most open in the world — gets tied in knots over what can or cannot be said. After “L’ Affaire Judt” we have “L’ Affaire Kushner,” but with different outcomes that suggest a shifting American Jewish discourse. The late Tony Judt, author of the brilliant study of late 20th-century Europe called “Postwar,” saw his New York persona changed with the appearance in 2003 in The New York Review of Books of an article called “Israel: The Alternative.” It posited the creation of a single binational state of Jews and Palestinians and suggested a Jewish state was anachronistic. The calls to his office began — “Tell Tony Judt this is Hitler calling and he says, “Congratulations.”’ Years later, an event featuring Judt at the Polish Consulate got canceled at the last minute after its organizers apparently came under pressure from prominent New York Jewish groups. To this day, in the city this British-born Jew came to love for its clamorous diversity, Judt’s luminous oeuvre sometimes seems overshadowed by a single polemical piece. I disagreed with Judt: No alternative binational state of Palestinians and Jews is imaginable in the Holy Land, at least not this side of utopia. History demonstrates that Jews need a homeland called Israel. Amos Oz, the Israeli author, has noted that, “When my father was a young man in Vilna, every wall in Europe said, ‘Jews go home to Palestine.’ Fifty years later when he went back to Europe on a visit, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030061