The Company They Keep

Israel Shahak, recently deceased, is a name not likely to ring any bells in this country. A former professor of chemistry [!] at Hebrew U, Shahak was an off-the-wall nut who was not just a run-of-the-mill anti-Zionist, but also an anti-semite. Yes, you read correctly. Shahak, who incidentally survived Bergen-Belsen, was a Jew-hater who openly espoused anti-semitic hate propaganda, as documented by Werner Cohn.

Shahak is a nut, a fringe lunatic. Unfortunately, as Cohn has shown, Shahak has received the endorsement of a number of far-left intellectuals, names that may sound familiar - Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Edward Said, thus giving his "scholarship" an undeserved legitamacy. Sadly, it seems that this list must now apparently be broadened to include that of Norman Finkelstein, who "has no doubt that what [Shahak] wrote [on Judaism] is accurate". Next time you see someone espouse these gentlemen, you might want to bring this to their attention.

Anyone who knows of others who endorse or support Shahak's "history of Judaism" are welcome to do so in the comments section. Sunlight is the best disinfectant to this kind of poison.

The Old Jewish Death Wish

Anti-Chomsky has an enlightening post slamming Eric Hobsbawm's subtly anti-Jewish (pro-assimilation) screed. Read it all, for this view has been gaining in strength in the last couple of years.