Sunday, May 03, 2009

Censorship in Lebanon?

"On the matter of censorship in Lebanon, I don't see any evidence of Orwellian thought police roaming libraries and neighbourhoods of Beirut ripping pages out of books or arresting members of student book clubs. Last time I checked, both The Diary of Anne Frank, as well as a number of Jewish and Israeli studies journals, are available in the Jafet Library stacks. That you would choose Lebanon's admittedly wrong-headed (but clearly unenforced) censorship laws for an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal seems entirely out of step with the most pressing and ethically serious challenges faced by the Lebanese people and the region at large. Rather, your op-ed seems to be nothing more than an apology to the likes of Daniel Pipes or Martin Kramer, for an embarrassing one-year stint at an Arab university. I strongly object to the exhibitionism of your ignorant and self-serving opinion on an international scale." (thanks Karim)