Ant's Pants

Eight years ago, serial Israel-hater Antony Loewenstein was quoted in the SMH saying "I don’t want to be defined as the guy who criticises Israel; I didn’t ask for this.”

Eight years later, let's see how that's going. The Sydney Morning Herald's Executive Style section interviewed him, describing him thus:

Antony Loewenstein is an Australian-Jewish opponent of Israel. Having spent time in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza and written two books on the subject,

Actually it's one book (if you can call it 'writing') and his time spent in Israel is considerably less than a typical Jewish teenager on study tour.

Topics covered include his species:

He says it’s his “responsibility as a human first, and a Jew second, to speak out when injustice occurs committed by my people’’.

His people? Who are they? Also discussed, Antony's eating:

He says while growing up in Melbourne, he attended Sabbath meals with his family.

‘‘I recall discussions about Israel and Palestine and the casual racism expressed towards Arabs. I didn’t have the knowledge then or language to forcefully respond but it made me distinctly uncomfortable.”

Antony is not very good at recalling Sabbath dinner conversations. His own family think he's a liar.  

And as always:

I continue to receive hate mail and occasional death threats for daring to support the Palestinians.”

He's just like Salman Rushdie, only without the sales figures. As Tim Blair once noted, the only people likely to be sending Antony death threats are English teachers.

How an unemployed author qualifies as 'executive' is anyone's guess but if they're going to talk fashion, how could they miss Antony's indoor hat-wearing past attempts?

It looked like he was wearing some sort of tracksuit cargo pants, purple sneakers, a man-bag and a khaki locomotive driver’s hat (worn for the duration).

Chic!