January 14, 2010

London,

My father was an exceptional person. I have known that all my life, of course, but nevertheless I have been taken aback by the outpouring of grief and admiration for him in the last three days, including wonderful letters and emails from all over the world and magnificent tributes in the press on both sides of the Atlantic, and in continental Europe too.

My father had an outstanding intellect. But because of his modesty I hadn’t quite realized to what extent his intellectual prowess went back to his earliest days, until reading some of the tributes this week.

On Wednesday, in The Times, a Mr Derek Taylor wrote a letter to say that he had been at the Perse school in Cambridge with my father. Mr Taylor wrote: “There was a school debate one day in 1946. The speakers were always sixth-formers. But John was 11 at the time and astonished the audience by standing up to make his point, quoting for his purpose the Russian Foreign Minister of 1927. It was a moment not to be forgotten.”

And yesterday in The Times, Gillian Tunkel wrote: “I have never forgotten the comment that John’s English teacher wrote to John’s parents at the end of one of John’s essays when John was 14: ‘I am not sufficiently equipped to mark this!’”

People who didn’t know my father, might have assumed that someone as erudite and bookish as he was, might somehow be deficient in common sense or worldly wisdom. Nothing could be further from the truth. He had unerring judgment and good sense in matters great and small.

He was unfailingly kind and sensitive too. He was always courteous and patient. I’ve never heard him be rude to anyone. He was immensely generous in every way, especially with his time and with his knowledge and advice. He would spend hours on the phone with people he hardly knew who had rung to pick his brain. And, as one of the many friends who have written to me said, he never looked over anyone’s shoulder at a party.

He remained friendly and totally unpompous to the end. Two days before he died, when I was urging the staff at St Mary’s, Paddington to do all they could to comfort him, a West Indian nurse said to me “Oh we all know about Mr Gross. He is the best conversationalist we’ve ever had here”.

My father’s intellect was also in tact until his final days. When he was almost unconscious, one of the doctors said to him: “Mr Gross we are moving you now, from the Samuel Lane ward to the Zachary Cope ward”. And my father, with his eyes still shut, suddenly mumbled “Ahh, Dr Zachary Cope – the famous abdominal expert who wrote an article about Jane Austen’s last illness.”

My father loved London. He delighted in taking visitors round tours of the East End, and literary and other places of interest elsewhere. As one American friend, Roger Kimball, wrote to me yesterday “John knew the city as well as any London taxi-driver – better in fact, because he could not only take you to any address you named but he also knew what had happened there from the time of Julius Caesar until the day before yesterday.”

My father loved literature and theatre, and all things English, but – without being religious – he had an intense sense of Jewishness too, hence his childhood memoir A Double Thread, and his groundbreaking study on the uses and misuses of the character Shylock over the last 400 years.

He also had a very happy temperament and a great zest for life. And because of this, after my sister has spoken and after the rabbi has offered the final prayers in Hebrew and said kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead — as we say goodbye to my father, we will conclude with an uplifting song (Tumbalaika) that my father liked in Yiddish — the other ancient language spoken by Jews of east European origin, the culture, literature and theatre of which my father adored almost as much as he did English literature.

(One of the last lively conversations he had just before Christmas, when he was rushed to hospital by my mother, was to show visitors, with the greatest of pleasure, a rare Yiddish edition of Oscar Wilde.)

Everything will be duller, and sadder without him.

He was also, of course, a fantastic father. I couldn’t have asked for a better father, and I feel privileged to be his son.

Gross points out:

When leading news outlets mention the so-called humanitarian flotillas from Turkey, why do they omit the fact that life expectancy and literacy rates are higher, and infant mortality rates are lower in Gaza than corresponding rates in Turkey? Have they considered that perhaps the humanitarian flotillas ought to be going in the other direction, towards Turkey?

Originally posted at Tom Gross’ Mideast Dispatch.

Not only did Israeli commandos today intercept a ship carrying hundreds of tons of Iranian weapons intended for Hezbollah in Lebanon – the biggest ever seizure of arms on their way from Iran to its client terrorist militia, Hezbollah, which Iran plans to use as one element in its attempt to wipe the Jewish state off the map (BBC story and video here).

Not only did Iran brutalize pro-democracy demonstrators once again on the streets of major Iranian cities today (there are several videos if you scroll down here from France 24, and a report here by BBC Persian).

But in addition Iran has appointed as its new deputy culture minister, in charge of media and communications, Mohammad-Ali Ramin, who previously served as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s top advisor on Holocaust matters and is known as “the brain” behind the president’s strategy of Holocaust denial.

Ramin hasn’t just repeatedly said that Jews invented the Holocaust, he has also said (sounding quite like Hitler) that “everyone knows Jews are filthy people who have spread lethal disease throughout history.”

In his new post as official in charge of communications and the press, Ramin will be able to influence Iran’s media agenda, as his boss continues the rush to acquire nuclear weapons despite a phony deal that Barack Obama and other western powers seem to have been suckered into by the Iranian regime.

Three leading Jewish figures have also now urged the international community to prevent Hosni from being appointed. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel, and French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann pleaded in an open letter to Le Monde last week that the position should not be awarded to Hosni, who has been Egypt’s culture minister for the past 22 years.

In addition to calling for the burning of library books by Israeli authors, Hosni, 71, has accused Jews of “infiltrating” the international media. As culture minister, he has banned many Israeli films (including “peace films” made by left-wing Israelis) from international film festivals in Cairo and forbidden an Israeli bookstand at the international book fair there. He has also stated that Israeli Jews have never contributed to any field of humanity, and instead claim the achievements of others as their own.

However, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reached a deal with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak not to block Farouk Hosni’s appointment as UNESCO chief. The paper says that Netanyahu regards Egypt’s support on security issues as too important to challenge Mubarak on the UNESCO issue.

Israeli human rights organization Shurat ha Din (Israel Law Center) has said it will sue Netanyahu in Israel’s Supreme Court if he fails to challenge what they termed “this outrageous appointment”.

It remains to be seen why the UN’s education and cultural organization (which was founded in 1945 with the stated goal of promoting peace and security through international cooperation in the fields of education, science, and culture) would want to appoint Farouk Hosni as its head – unless of course the leading UN movers and shakers share his anti-Semitic views.

Courtesy of tomgrossmedia.com