Can somebody explain to me what is so special about Amos Oz? I mean, he writes lines that are not different from what you read on Hallmark cards. That is literature now? Once, when I was teaching at Colorado College, Oz was invited to give a talk. The entire city, it seemed, showed up. He gave his typical predictable Amos Oz talk that American liberals and leftists love to hear--and he never fails to mention to them that he is not a pacifist and that he is proud of his fighting in the Israeli Offense Forces; do they remember that Oz blamed the alleged drift in Israeli politics after the rise of Likud in 1977 on the Jews who came from non-European countries? So in that talk that I attended he went on about his alleged bogus humanity, and said at one point that a nation is corrupted when "its language is abused" or silly words like that. After he finisehd, and I was seething with anger--my students wanted me to go to hear him--I simply asked him: "You spoke about the abuse of language in a nation as a sign of its moral corruption. How much abuse of language have you done today with your constant references to "Palestinian terrorists" and" Palestinian terroristm"--I stopped counting after the 17th reference? According to your own theory, I added, this is not a pretty sign, is it?"