"There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity...I mean, there's always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.”
He also was contemptuous of Jews who, with German machine guns pointed at their heads, went to their deaths:
"“I mean, if you and I were in a line moving towards what we knew were gas chambers, I'd rather have a go at taking one of the guards with me; but they [the Jews] were always submissive.”
Right, Roald. Better to "have a go" at a Nazi with a machine gun, who might decide NOT to blow your head off, but subject you to a week of slow torture. My late friend Brother Theodore recalled his time in a concentration camp, and how German guards would sometimes string someone up, upside down, and let the dogs chew on the victim's face. But that's just ONE little atrocity story out of many.
But what's an atrocity story compared to the DELIGHTS that children have in reading Dahl's darling and delightful flights of fancy?
The term "inconvenient truth" comes up.
SOME minority groups are not treated as well as others. Their indignities are dismissed. These are usually the minorities who aren't known for carrying around explosives and machine guns, or rioting and breaking into stores and stealing TV sets. For example, there are the Native Americans who have quietly rotted on reservations. While we hear all the time about slaves brought over to America, nobody wants to hear how boats came to America and pushed the Native Americans off their land, and fought bloody battles that killed off thousands of them.
Here's THE INDEPENDENT and the full quotes from DAHLING Mr. Dahl:
Dahl, like Peter Gabriel, Patti Smith, Roger Waters and many others, sometimes hid his Jew-hate behind what he considered a very reasonable wish for Israel to be blown off the map. Hating Israel is NOT hating Jews, even if it IS the "Jewish State" and where you find Jerusalem.
In 1982, as quote in The Independent, Dahl declared that after a skirmish with Lebanon, "we all started hating the Israelis.”
He isn't quoted as hating Russians for their genocide. Or South Africans. Or North Koreans. Or the Africans who ate Michael Rockefeller. Or the Turks or the Syrians or whoever was engaged in a skirmish with a neighboring country.
He never even joked that he hated the French for their attempts to take over England, or the Germans who bombed the shit out of London.
Nope. He only endorsed HATING the ISRAELIS.
Sighing loudly, he moaned, "Must Israel, like Germany, be brought to her knees before she learns how to behave in this world?”
AH. He didn't HATE the Germans, though. And Israel had not, and has not declared that they should rule the world. Jews don't even try to convert people to Judaism while missionaries constantly try to convert "heathens" into following Christ (the Jew). Israel didn't sink British ships. But "we all started hating Israelis" and for such good reason, huh?
Can you imagine if Dahl had substituted BLACKS or MUSLIMS for ISRAELIS? Would his books be in ANY libraries today?
It would be inconvenient to have to pull all those Wonka books off the shelves. It would be ironic to ban the Wonka movie that starred the Jew named Gene Wilder. And so it goes; some intolerance is tolerated.
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