Pierre Assouline, in his regular Le Monde blog La République des Livres, pays tribute to Tony Judt, who died late last week.

“Provocative? It goes without saying. Tony Judt was one of those fighter-intellectuals, as there are writer-travellers. He was never sparing with wounding language, even with his peers, treating scornfully such and such a great historian as a ‘mandarin’ or certain liberal editorialists as ‘useful idiots’.”

Assouline’s tribute concentrates on Judt’s quarrels with the US pro-Israel lobby. He points out that Judt’s powerful arguments were sometimes used not just by enemies of Israel but by enemies of Jews. (As is often correctly remarked, if one is anti-zionist that doesn’t necessarily mean one is anti-semitic; equally, however, it doesn’t mean that one is not.)

Judt’s views led to him being characterised by the American Jewish Committee as a “neo-anti-semitic progressive”. Equally wounded it would seem, the online magazine Slate offered its readers a quiz on the theme “Are you a liberal anti-semite?” in which they were asked “Which state most shocks you for its human rights violations: Sudan, Israel or Massachusetts?” Among the prizes on offer was a dinner with Tony Judt.


Pierre Assouline's blog is here: