Israel's Academic Moonbats

I wish I could say that the stories given in this article are an isolated phenomenon. I wish I could say that some in Israel's universities do not share the same nihilistic impulses as their European and American counterparts. If I did that, however, I would be lying.

An influential and very vocal minority in Israeli academia is openly anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian - NOT just "anti-occupation", but anti-"Israel as Jewish state". Perhaps the best explanation of the problem comes from an article analyzing a special issue of the flagship anti-Zionist journal, Theory and Criticism. Money Quote (Emphases are mine):

Post-modern academics cannot come to terms with the “existing order,” but they do not know how to change it without turning today’s “oppressed” into tomorrow’s “oppressors.” They do not know how to wage an effective fight against the evil, which, in their view, is inevitably rooted in political reality. Lacking the possibility of engaging in practical action, all they have left is negation for its own sake.

Despite the impression conveyed by some of its articles, Theory and Criticism is not the ephemeral publication of a fringe group. Unfortunately, it presents us with a reliable picture of a mode of thinking now accepted as the norm in important circles in Israel’s academia, especially in the humanities and social sciences. In light of this fact, it is impossible to avoid certain depressing conclusions about the role played by the academic elite in Israeli society.

Most Israelis expect that their institutes of higher learning will contribute to the advancement of the public discourse in Israel; that the tens of thousands of young people who enter the universities each year will benefit from their education by becoming better citizens, and learning to make intelligent political decisions within a democratic framework. Yet Israel’s campuses are gradually becoming hothouses for political anarchism, as the Israeli intelligentsia busily educates towards resentment of the Jewish state and the values that permit it to exist. Academic “post-Zionism” does not even play the important positive role that intellectual opposition sometimes does in a pluralistic society; it does not bother to advance realistic alternatives or formulate a creative, inspiring vision which offers a kernel of hope. In its cultivation of chronic and sterile resentment, bereft of both responsibility and imagination, the trend represented so powerfully by Theory and Criticism in the end offers nothing more than “theory” and “criticism.”

Tidbits - Annoyances

1. Norman Finkelstein is kinda like the Energizer bunny. He just keeps going and going - in the same direction. Recently at UC Irvine, he gave his stock speech on Israel's faults. Once again, he repeated the myth that "most historians" agree that Israel committed "ethnic cleansing" in 1948. Once again, he quoted Morris' interviews rather than his actual scholarly works. ...and going and going and going...
2. It is now the year 2006, and not one scholarly study has been written on the city of Jaffa during the Mandate. Arab Haifa has been studied, even Arab Safed. Yet people keep insisting on only analyzing Jaffa through "cultural visions" and "mutual perceptions" with Tel Aviv. What is so hard about studying the actual city, its people, its economy, its development? Is there no historical material? Is it just easier not to do the footwork? Please, someone explain this to me!

Justice - Real and Counterfeit

Maybe I'm paranoid, but when pro-Palestinians say they want "peace with justice" or a "just solution to the Palestinian Refugee Problem", I believe they mean the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state, either through outright dissolution or indirectly by allowing the "Right of Return". Since they can't say this outright, they use vague terms that mean one thing to one audience (Westerners) and another to Palestinians and their supporters. It seems to me, at least, that the justice is only for the Palestinians, not the Jews. This would also explain why "Nakba Day" is davka on the day of the establishment of the State. Thus the "injustice" is not just the Nakba but the very establishemnt of a Jewish state.

Luckily, there are still a few tzadikim in Sodom who will call a spade a spade - Prof. Amnon Rubinstein is one of them. In a well-written article he lays out the justice of the Jewish national cause. God Bless men like him.

Research Suggestions

(For previous suggestions see here, here and here)

This post's subject: David 'Mickey' Marcus

Those of us who saw Cast a Giant Shadow might be surprised to learn that no academic-level bio (based on archival documents) has been written on the first 'Aluf' (Major-General) in the IDF. Other than the popular book of the same name, written more than three decades ago, no-one else has tried their hand at studying the man and his times.

This is a shame, because many, if not most, of the documentary material for such a study is now available to researchers in the IDF and Israel state archives, as well as US archives. The controversial subject of the battle of Latrun in which Marcus was involved, has already been the subject of a number of studies. Many people who were acquainted with Marcus, such as Shlomo Shamir, and Yigal Allon, have had their chance to tell their side of the story. Marcus deserves no less.

Those of you with a knowledge of the period and a passion for biography are invited to take up the challenge of telling the story of Marcus' travails with the Haganah, Palmach and later the IDF. Many questions remain about Marcus await uncovering - Why is he barely mentioned in unit or official histories? Was his relationship with the Palmach really as rosy as Allon and Rabin later tried to claim? What was his contribution to the defense of Israel? What was his real relationship with David Ben-Gurion?

Good Luck and Happy Hunting! AIWAC

Walt and Mearsheimer in the Dock

Our good friends Walt and Mearsheimer have hit back in the London Review of Books, after a period of silence. As a public service for future fiskers, I will point out but some of the many flaws in their reasoning:

"At least two of the letters complain that we ‘catalogue Israel’s moral flaws’, while paying little attention to the shortcomings of other states. We focused on Israeli behaviour, not because we have any animus towards Israel, but because the United States gives it such high levels of material and diplomatic support. Our aim was to determine whether Israel merits this special treatment either because it is a unique strategic asset or because it behaves better than other countries do. We argued that neither argument is convincing: Israel’s strategic value has declined since the end of the Cold War and Israel does not behave significantly better than most other states." (emphases mine)

Benny Morris has already put paid to their one-sided study, which was mostly reliant on anti-Israel sources and quotes. People should immediately notice the logical flaw here - "we" focus on Israel's behaviour solely to see whether it was better than other states, then conclude that it doesn't, all without actually comparing Israel and other states in various categories (freedoms, laws etc.).

Dershowitz also claims that we quote David Ben-Gurion ‘out of context’ and thus misrepresented his views on the need to use force to build a Jewish state in all of Palestine. Dershowitz is wrong. As a number of Israeli historians have shown, Ben-Gurion made numerous statements about the need to use force (or the threat of overwhelming force) to create a Jewish state in all of Palestine. In October 1937, for example, he wrote to his son Amos that the future Jewish state would have an ‘outstanding army . . . so I am certain that we won’t be constrained from settling in the rest of the country, either by mutual agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbours, or by some other way’ (emphasis added). Furthermore, common sense says that there was no other way to achieve that goal, because the Palestinians were hardly likely to give up their homeland voluntarily. Ben-Gurion was a consummate strategist and he understood that it would be unwise for the Zionists to talk openly about the need for ‘brutal compulsion’. We quote a memorandum Ben-Gurion wrote prior to the Extraordinary Zionist Conference at the Biltmore Hotel in New York in May 1942. He wrote that ‘it is impossible to imagine general evacuation’ of the Arab population of Palestine ‘without compulsion, and brutal compulsion’. Dershowitz claims that Ben-Gurion’s subsequent statement – ‘we should in no way make it part of our programme’ – shows that he opposed the transfer of the Arab population and the ‘brutal compulsion’ it would entail. But Ben-Gurion was not rejecting this policy: he was simply noting that the Zionists should not openly proclaim it. Indeed, he said that they should not ‘discourage other people, British or American, who favour transfer from advocating this course, but we should in no way make it part of our programme’.

See Efraim Karsh and Joseph Heller for rebuttals to these charges. Check out Benny Morris also.

We provided a fully documented version of the paper so that readers could see for themselves that we used reputable sources.

I would hardly call The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, MERIP, Simha Flapan, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein 'reputable sources'. The paper also relies excessively on journalistic material rather than academic (i.e. primary-source based) studies for many of its charges.

On a related point, Michael Szanto contrasts the US-Israeli relationship with the American military commitments to Western Europe, Japan and South Korea, to show that the United States has given substantial support to other states besides Israel (6 April). He does not mention, however, that these other relationships did not depend on strong domestic lobbies. The reason is simple: these countries did not need a lobby because close ties with each of them were in America’s strategic interest. By contrast, as Israel has become a strategic burden for the US, its American backers have had to work even harder to preserve the ‘special relationship’.

Perhaps it has occured to Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer that there are competing interests in the Middle East (as opposed to the above-mentioned cuntries where ther are no challenges to strategic interest), hence the need for a lobby for one of the sides? NOOO, it must be that we're a strategic burden....

Although we are not surprised by the hostility directed at us, we are still disappointed that more attention has not been paid to the substance of the piece.

Oh, plenty of attention has been directed at it, you just chose to ignore it.

Ladies and Gentelman, this is the level to which scholarship has sunk. You can swallow libels wholesale, invent consensuses where none exist, rely heavily on newspaper sources and non-academic diatribes, and contradict yourself repeatedly. All that is asked is that you attack Israel, and all will be forgiven. Propaganda may thus be paraded as scholarship, as long as it's for the right cause. It's official, the institution of the university has been destroyed, not by outside forces, but by its own hand. Pathetic.