July 02, 2003

CHRONOLOGY OF A BLOGSTORY

On 6/26, Horsefeathers received and posted a copy of the following letter from Oxford Professor Andrew Wilkie to Israeli, Amit Duvshani:

Dear Amit Duvshani,

Thank you for contacting me, but I don't think this would work. I have a huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because the (the Palestinians) wish to live in their own country.

I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army. As you may be aware, I am not the only UK scientist with these views but I'm sure you will find another suitable lab if you look around.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Wilkie

Nuffield Professor of Pathology,
Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine,
The John Radcliffe,
Headington,
Oxford OX3 9DS,UK.
Tel (44)-1865-222619
Fax (44)-1865-222500

On 6/27 Naomi Ragen learned, via Horsefeathers, of Wilkie's letter and responded as follows:

Dear Dr. Wilkie,
Ah the wonders of the internet. No longer can closet anti Semites ply their trade under the cover of darkness. Now the entire world knows who you are, as your disgusting bias in dealing with Amit Duvshani is now out there for all to see. The Jews have been living in the land of Israel for three thousand years. Indeed, as Disraeli pointed out, while your ancestors were still swinging from
the trees, ours were priests in the Temple of Solomon.

You can accept or reject Mr. Duvshani on the basis of his academic qualifications. But to reject him on the basis of his qualifications as a human
being because he served in the Israeli army and defended the Jews in their
ancestral homeland shows me, an Israeli, a Jew, the author of six books, one
play, and numerous articles that you Brits are still swinging from the trees in
a Neanderthal morality that stinks of eras only lately ended.

For shame, Herr Professor. For shame Oxford.

Naomi Ragen

On 6/27 Charles Johnson saw Naomi Ragen's letter and posted the Wilkie story at his superb and widely read weblog littlegreenfootballs. Other blogs, like Roger Simon's weighed in, and within hours the story spread round the world, via the blogosphere. By 6/29 the Drudge Report had picked up the story. Professor Wilkie began issuing apologies and requests for forgiveness. As usual, the last to catch on were the mainstream media, but as of today the NYTimes and the International Herald Tribune are on to the story.

The multiplier effect of weblogs is transformative. The usual media censorship of acceptable, politically correct phenomena like academic anti-semitism, no longer holds sway. A small weblog, like Horsefeathers can be the butterfly wing flapping in New York that starts a tidal wave inundating anti-semites at Oxford.