Why Sri Lanka?

Regular readers will know that Antony Loewenstein has an unhealthy obsession with Israel. Actually, describing it as an obsession doesn't to justice to the sheer volume of polemic writing he manages to churn out (albeit mostly in the form of two or three word posts and tweets).

At some point , Antony started very occasionally blogging about Sri Lanka, and the Tamil conflict. Was he expanding his world view? Was Antony all of a sudden waking up to the reality that Israel wasn't in fact the most eeeevil place on Earth, and in actual fact there were human rights abuses taking place elsewhere? Not exactly. For the most part, Antony was (as might be expected from a hapless fringe-dweller) barracking for the terrorists. Again.

This blog has often pointed out his errors, stupid mistakes, embarrassing cockups, intellectual dishonesty and general awkwardness, in most cases for his 'commentary' on Israel and in some cases the US and Australia. It now seems there was a whole group of other people, familiar with the Sri Lankan conflict who also thought Antony was a clueless moron.

The Carthaginian Solution has a number of posts about our favourite bestselling author. In the above post, the writer notes Loewenstein's hypocrisy, demanding an independent state for the ethnic Tamils inside Sri Lanka, yet being the same guy obsessed with denying the Jews a state of their own.

Of course we aren't allowed to call him an antisemite for this double standard. Antony will always remind everyone that he's "a Jew" (a term most Jews don't actually use to describe themself, but he's not to know that, being so distant from them).

A number of other posts at that site hold Loewenstein to account for supporting a group which encouraged 12 year olds to die and whose previous achievements included suicide bombing. Sound familiar? Once again, in the battle between good and evil, Loewenstein chose badly.

CS notes Antony's efforts to see a Book Festival cancelled, presumably as they didn't invite him.

If there was a Darwin Award for ‘human rights’ activists, this year’s front-runners would be Antony Loewenstein and his backers Reporters sans frontiers and JDF. They promoted the boycott of the Galle Literary Festival, (the only international literary festival in Sri Lanka) on the grounds that since there were problems with free speech in a post-war environment, the best way to improve the situation would be through a boycott, thus preventing free speech.

We hadn't discovered the site until now, as Antony in typical fashion never engaged his critics, no doubt convinced he was right and they were all part of a conspiracy to silence him. Geez Antony, would it kill you to throw us a link once in a while? We're not nearly as famous or successful as you.

The big question however, is why did Loewenstein care about the Tamils? Of all the trendy causes in the world, why would Antony choose that one?

We can now reveal, for the first time, that Antony has been dating a Tamil girl for quite some time. Next time you hear Antony demanding greater transparency from the media, feel free to remind him that he never bothered mentioning that. Sure your comment will be deleted from his blog and never see the light of day, but that's transparency for you...

When Mango called Loewenstein a "Tamil Fluffer" I'm sure that's not what he had in mind.

Update: Via comments to this post: Antony's Tamil Temptress dumped him. Apparently there are women who can withstand his intellect and looks. See related post.