Georgia Straight | 08Jul2010 | Orest Slepokura
http://www.straight.com/article-332602/vancouver/oxymoronic-arguments-elicit-pity-and-wonder

Oxymoronic arguments elicit pity and wonder

Oxymorons often challenge our sense of logic. A case in point: Canada’s former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy’s appeal for the “humanitarian bombing” of Serbia in 1999. Or more recently, the instances of so-called honour killings, in which older males murder recalcitrant younger female relatives to salvage a family’s allegedly ruined reputation.

Dr. Grigori Khaskin’s letter introduces us to yet another oxymoron, no less daunting in terms of the strain it imposes on logic and common sense: namely, the “Jewish anti-Semite”.

Khaskin paints this kind of Jew in unabashedly lurid colours -- he projects the image of a latter-day, wannabe Nazi collaborator zealously bent on assisting assorted villains in the extermination of his Jewish brethren.

The portrayal of Jews dissenting from the received Zionist version of Middle East politics is so grossly over the top that I feel moved to wonder if, in fact, the only so-called Jewish anti-Semite here is Khaskin himself.

Orest Slepokura, Strathmore, Alberta