Greetings!

My appreciation to Eugene Volokh for his sleuthing on the context of the sentence fragment that hangs like a cloud over the electoral efforts of Lenora Fulani.  Professor Hasen will probably have to pull the plug on this discussion thread as the "near urban myth status" of the fragment makes this a never-ending story.  However, I will take one last bite at the apple and risk getting tarred with the brush used on Fulani.

1)  No one has responded to my observation that the disputed commentary was outside the scope of a political campaign and outside a federally funded election contest which is where the immediate discussion began.

2)  Now that we know the context for the sentence fragment was a play review, by Fulani, of a play about Zionism written and produced by her Jewish mentor Fred Newman I believe the anti-semitic charge fails.

3) The "sell their souls" comment, in the context of a play review is not an extreme statement but represents the poetic license often found in performance reviews by many reviewers.

4)  The "to function as mass murders of people of color" comment is not directed at people of Jewish faith, as the sentence fragment so often quoted would lead one to believe.  Rather, if you examine the construction of the full sentence, it is a commentary on the actions of a country, Israel.  In other words, political commentary on a nation-state.

One may not agree with Fulani's distaste for Israeli militarism but the charge of "anti-semitism" is overreaching.

Michael Richardson

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From: "Volokh, Eugene" <VOLOKH@law.ucla.edu>
To: <election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Subject: RE: Brad Smith column is inaccurate
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 15:10:10 -0700

    I'm a big believer in trying to slay urban myths, but shouldn't the labeling as an "urban myth" or as a "near urban myth" follow discovery of the context, rather than preceding it?

 

    Here is the best source I could find, based on a quick google search, though I'd love to see more, of course.  It's a column by Ed Koch, and it purports to quote a response he got from Lenora Fulani on this very point; unless Koch is misquoting Fulani's response, the response does not seem particularly exculpatory.

 

 

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/4/19/162942.shtml

 

Lenora Fulani is once again in the news. Last year, Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote a letter published in The New York Times. Mr. Foxman wrote, "Ms. Fulani has stated that Jews Îhad to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism ö to function as mass murderers of people of color ö in order to keep it.'"

I was shocked at Ms. Fulani's clearly anti-Semitic statement and wrote to the chair of the Independence Party, stating in part:

"A Daily News article of December 7 written by Lisa Colangelo states, ÎParty representatives have said the quotes were taken out of context.' I would appreciate knowing the proper context of Dr. Fulani's remarks referred to by Îparty representatives.' I cannot conceive of any context in which Ms. Fulani's comments could be perceived as other than anti-Semitic, but perhaps there was a unique context which gave the remarks a benign rather than a malignant meaning."

On December 16, 2004, Dr. Fulani wrote, "The context of the remark quoted by Mr. Foxman in his April 20, 2004 letter to the New York Times is a theatre review I wrote in 1989. The play, No Room for Zion, was written by Fred Newman and was produced that year at the Castillo Theatre. The play was part memoir, part political critique of the Jewish experience in the post-war period. My review dealt specifically with the issue of nationalism and its dangers. In this case I was remarking on how black America should learn from the tragedies experienced by Jewish people. I wrote:

ÎAs I sat and listened I saw more deeply in Fred's teaching the historical pitfalls of nationalism. After all, according to nationalistic ideology, the Jewish people have gotten the ultimate ö land, in the form of a nation state. The fact is, however, that they had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism ö to function as mass murderers of people of color ö in order to keep it.'

"Because my comment was about the play and, more importantly, because the production was an expression of Newman's views which have significantly shaped my own, I asked him to write to you to provide the larger historical and intellectual Îcontext' in which both the play and my review were written. I have enclosed his letter, which I hope will shed further light on the issue at hand."

Newman's letter stated: "ÎThe dirtiest work of capitalism ö to which Dr. Fulani referred in her article ö Îto function as mass murders of people of color' is to act as its garrison state in an increasingly hostile and unstable Arab and Muslim world. The language is harsh. The reality, as we now see, is even more harsh."

Mr. Newman closed with "Perhaps this brings us to a bottom line. It may be that my views ö the views of a leftist ö are distasteful to you and that you would choose to criticize me for them. That, of course, is your prerogative." ...