Debt wrong

Mon, 05 Jun 2000 19:09:00 +0000

Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion gave the best answer to David Horowitz's straw man question, "Does Oprah need reparations?" In 1952 Germany agreed to pay reparations to Israel. Ben-Gurion called it "collective reparation" not just for the Holocaust survivors but for "a people that have been persecuted, oppressed and plundered for hundreds of years." He understood that collective suffering and victimization demanded collective restitution. A half century later the Israeli government still receives billions in payments from Germany, even though most Israelis weren't even born during the Holocaust and many of them are prosperous and successful professionals and businesspeople.

The rest of Horowitz's long-winded diatribe against reparations is a mix of misstatements of fact, distortions and jumbled logic. But when you strip it all away there are four reasons, not 10, why Horowitz does not believe African-Americans should receive reparations for America's history of slavery.

Argument No. 1 -- A handful of Southern planters, not the U.S. government, business or whites in general were responsible for and profited from slavery.

Salon.com > Earl Ofari Hutchison

Debt wrong