Sunday, August 27, 2006

I Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

A commenter on this blog asked whether anyone can rebut our good friend Norman Finkelstein's claims against Israel, which were based almost entirely on reports of various human rights NGOs. Well, here's one of the main reasons that Finkelstein's book should be considered, at most, a tendentious prosecutor's brief - that's how the NGOs work. This according to a an informed critique of Human Rights Watch (there is an even more scathing critique here). Money Quote:
More broadly than that, however, my primary problem with Human Rights Watch's reporting is its lawyerly tendency toward tendentiousness. I mean that Human Rights Watch's reports are not neutral, scrupulously acknowledging the evidence or law or legal views that run against its reporting and legal conclusions. On the contrary, it rather proudly offers what can only be called briefs - shaping the law and evidence towards whatever conclusions it has decided to offer. In occasional conversations I've had with its senior staff and lawyers over the years, they defend this practice on the grounds that it is a legal organization, writing conclusions based on law applied to facts.
In my view, it is, however, a tendentiousness and frankly noxious practice because this 'brief-writing' is aimed not a court, which will at least have the benefit of an opposing counsel's briefs, with a different point of view, but instead a credulous, not well educated, and alas not-so-bright media. The media tend already to share HRW's point of view, and hence tend to ask few questions - if they could even think of any - and mostly wind up quoting the press release. (I don't think anyone - except in the most extraordinary instances, such as the Lebanon war - ever reads the actual reports, least of all the press, and it became something of a joke in the organization, with senior executives pleading with staff not to write so many pages that simpl;y won't get read. I'm sure that during the years I worked with and for HRW, and wrote many reports from the field, no one ever read the actual texts.)
In my view, an organization genuinely scrupulous about its neutrality and objectivity would make a concerted point, in its reports and analyses, of noting the objections that might be raised to its views, on both factual issues as well as legal points of view. It should adopt, that is, a scholarly or historical point of view, rather than that of a lawyer presenting one side to a court. This is not to say that it should not adopt whatever conclusion it thinks is right - but that it should make a genuine point, always, of presenting what a knowledgeable opponent might reasonably say on the other side, rather than relying on the ignorance and credulity and pre-existing sympathy of its media audience to not ask it any hard questions.
Finkelstein, in his zealousness to libel Israel, fell into this trap.
QED (Quod Erat Demonstrandum), or in plain English, I rest my case.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Index Blues

Recently I finished preparing an index for a scholarly volume scheduled to come out in a few months. Along the way I ran into some difficulties with some of the references. In order to prevent this happening in the future, I have prepared some indexer's recommendations for article writers:
  1. When referring to an article or book, please write the name of the author/editor in full - both the first and last name - no initials. This includes when you refer to your own work. Doing otherwise forces the indexer to spend a great deal of time playing 'guess the author', or hunting down your self-references.
  2. Pick one form of notation or referencing and stick with it. For instance, if you're referring to a passuk, don't change mid-article from 7:13 to 7.13. If you're referring to the Israel State Archives, don't change (if you're writing in Hebrew) from AMI [Archiyon Medinat Yisra'el] to GM [Ginzach hamedinah]. Be consistent.
  3. There is such a thing as overkill. There is no need to bring 10 different references or page numbers to make a simple point or mention an uncontested fact - 2 or 3 will do. These additional references only mean more (unnecessary) work for the indexer.

Remember, the faster the indexer's work is finished, the faster your work gets published.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Guess who's up for tenure?

Having learned that a good friend of ours is up for tenure at a "midwestern university", I thought I might write a quiz for those who would like to discover who he is (answer at bottom of post).
  1. Who compares Jews and Israelis to Nazis at every given opportunity, to the point where it becomes simply tiresome?
  2. Who's "academic record" consists mostly of footnoted op-eds and review essays in journals like the Journal of Palestine Studies?
  3. Who attacks others for abusing the Holocaust, yet hides behind his status as a son of survivors?
  4. Who has spent most of his free time and energy conducting personal character assassination of Israel supporters?
  5. Who denies being an anti-semite, yet wholeheartedly embraces Israel Shahak, known crank and Jewish anti-semite?
  6. Who wholeheartedly supports Hizbollah?
  7. Who claims "historical concensus" by only mentioning people who agree with him?
  8. Who complains that Jews try to hold a monopoly on human suffering, yet does not spend even a fraction of the time he dedicates to Israel-bashing to helping those suffering from genocide (i.e. Darfur)?
  9. Who's "academic" works on Israel have received plaudits almost entirely from the looney-left end of the scholarly spectrum? Who is getting references from Noam Chomsky and Avi Shlaim?
  10. Who is, contrary to common sense, being given the opportunity to get tenure at a university, when his actual contibutions (journal articles) to Political Science (he's not an historian) approach zero?

Answer: Norman G. Finkelstein

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Historical Travesty

In her (justified) attack on the incompetence of Ehud Olmert during the current war (see My Obiter Dicta's latest posts), Dr. Judith Klinghoffer compares him to Levi Eshkol, Prime Minister of Israel from 1963 to 1969, including the Six-Day War. Here Klinghoffer relies on the popular, selective, memory, which remembers Eshkol as a stammering, hesitant, leader, the wrong person at the wrong time, only to be saved by the dashing Dayan who went on to win the war.
Like most popular recollections based on fear and innuendo, it is an inaccuracy filled with half-truths. Dayan certainly got all the glory for the victory, but he did not deserve all the credit. Even Rabin later admitted that Eshkol had been done a disservice by the character assassination done to him before, during and after the war, a tradition which Klinghoffer unfortunately continues.
Recent research has demonstrated that Eshkol was far wiser and more resilient than he is given credit for. I highly recommend reading Dr. Michael Oren's article on Eshkol (free reg' reqd.), which puts Eshkol's performance in its proper place. We can only hope that more such articles will help rehabilitate Eshkol's reputation based on historical facts rather than skewed popular images.