Concerning the London Review of Books and its editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers:
"The most sensitive area," says Ross McKibbin, an Oxford don who writes on politics for the paper, "is undoubtedly the Middle East, where you couldn't say there is much balance." Wilmers herself says that her customary ambivalence doesn't extend to Israel: "I'm unambiguously hostile to Israel because it's a mendacious state. They do things that are just so immoral and counterproductive and, as a Jew, especially as a Jew, you can't justify that."
"My people", as she calls fellow Jews, "have a responsibility": "I feel a particular right to speak out on this because of my background." In August she ran an essay headlined "Zionist Terrorism". What about Palestinian terrorism: does that get a look-in? "Everyone knows about that," she counters. "I just think we get worked up about the wrong things, and there is more wrong on one side. What Cherie Blair said about being a suicide bomber if she'd been brought up in Gaza, I can absolutely see that point."
'As a Jew...' she says. Well, yes. Jews are just people. So you can expect the same mix of qualities amongst them as you can amongst other sorts of people. Unambiguous hostility to Israel for being 'mendacious'; levels of mendacity of other states in the Middle East not a topic for comment. As a Jew you can't justify Jewish immorality; but Palestinian terrorism you can skate past (and do worse than skate past) because 'everyone knows' about it. Such are the constituents of responsible moral judgement. Not as a Jew but just as a person, I know the odour of that kind of 'responsibility'. (Thanks: DH.)