Is there a more disgusting public intellectual anywhere in the world than Bernard Henry-Levy? Disgusting not because of his political views, but because of his smarmy prose, his idées préconçues, his affection for brutal regimes such as Algeria’s or Israel’s? There is a two-page article by him, reporting from Israel, in which you he writes the usual mixture of neo-con diatribe against “Islamofascism” (he dares to make a comparison between the current war and the Spanish civil war, started 70 years ago this month), describes Sderot as a martyred town like Lebanon, makes facile descriptions of Hizbullah as an Iranian puppet (several times for emphasis), and compares Gilad Shalit to Daniel Pearl. But most criminal of all, surely, is how he waxes lyrical about how great Shimon Peres is. Shimon Peres! Shimon Peres!
As the Angry Arab put it recently, why do I do this to myself?
Link to article?
Title made me imagine a Diner des (neo)Cons with the French, Brits and Americans bringing along, respectively, Bernard-Henri, Hitchens and Kristol….all arguing about who coined the term Islamofascist.
OK, I subscribe to Le Monde and don’t think they have access for non-subscribers. But http://arabist.net/downloads/060728.pdf“ rel=”nofollow”>here’s a PDF of that issue. They also have a very cool article about the Alexandria underwater archeology dispute.
God, it reads like a Readers Digest parody.
Meanwhile, over at Aqoul, there’s been some dirt-dishing about BHL, incl news of his building high walls around his beachfront property in Tangier to keep the Lustful Native Gaze off his bimbette wife.
http://lounsbury.aqoul.com/archives/2006/07/crossroad_citie_1.html
[…] P.S. I heard they will be publishing a translation Bernard Henry-Levy’s moronic article in Le Monde this weekend. Classic: they publish him when he’s being saccharine about Israel even though they trashed him with glee for his book American Vertigo. […]