Food for thought

TOWARDS the end of 2006, the academic Tony Judt found himself at the centre of, depending on your point of view, a political tempest or a storm in a teacup. Due to speak at the Polish consulate in New York, the event was cancelled following telephone calls from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, who reacted as if the Poles had invited a smashed Mel Gibson to speak on the subject of international Jewry. This, said some, was a straw in the wind - evidence of the power of the "Israel lobby" of which Judt was notoriously critical. Others, among them Christopher Hitchens, saw it as a fart in the wind - evidence of little more than the hysteria and self-pity of the anti-lobbyists.