Peretz Interprets Marius Narrowly

Richard Marius deserves a vigorous defense against the morally obtuse Martin Peretz ("Marius `Unhired' as Gore Aid," news story, Jul. 21, 1995). I served as a faculty member under Marius for two years; a forthwright and sometimes outspoken intellectual, he has always drawn a steady flow of criticsm, and like all of us, he has his faults. As a colleague of Marius, as a sometime critic of the man, and as a Jew, let me be emphatic: anti-Semitism is not one of those faults.

Peretz, on the other hand, makes himself a fool trying to serve the parochial interests of an ugly strain of Zionism. For him to say that comparing Jews to Nazis is always wrong is for him to betray himself as a racist. Being Jewish gives no man or woman immunity from cruelty. Being a Jews, as a matter of blood or faith, does not pardon any man or woman from the full moral stain of fascistic conduct.

Marius joins the company of notable Jewish intellects, best represented by Hannah Arendt, who enrage the entrenched leaders of Jewish political orthodoxy by pointing out their most dangerous failures to conduct themselves as decent citizens of the world. All Jews are well served by these honest moral criticisms of our leaders, and Peretz would do well as a member of the Harvard faculty, and as a Jew, to broaden his moral vision and admit that when a Jew tortures, when a Jew abducts a citizen from his or her home, when a Jew serves his state through terror, that Jew is no better than a fascist of any other faith. Peter S. Temes   Preceptor, Expository   Writing Program   Instructor, "Moral Principles of War," 1993-94