The Arabs and the Holocaust

Much research has been done on the sufferings of North African Jewry under Vichy and Nazi rule. Just recently we have learned of an einzantzgruppe unit that was meant to wipe out the 500,000 strong Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine, after Rommel's expected victory.

What, however, of the response of the Arabs of North Africa, both the general populace and the religious and lay leadership to the persecution of the Jews? Robert Satloff is coming out with a book this October that promises to try and answer that question. It will be very interesting to see what he has to say.

Finkelstein Faces the Facts? Not a chance.

We have made mention before of Norman Finkelstein's false claim that there is a "scholarly consensus" that Israel "ethnically cleansed" the Palestinian-Arabs in 1948. Apparently he has now backtracked a little - claiming that "scholars widely agree" on this. This is still false, of course, but a far cry from his earlier strident statements.

Unfortunately, there is even more evidence that Finkelstein will always remain a rabble-rousing propagandist. One of the first rules of thumb for actual historians is that you must never accept sources uncritically. It is always important to view everything with a sceptical eye, lest you be duped into accepting fairy tales as fact. This is especially true with regard to the Arab-Israel conflict, where almost everything, from architecture to archaeology is politicized by at least one of the sides.

Finkelstein is apparently unaware of this fact. For instance, he seems to think that human-rights organizations are all apolitical and neutral sources, and can be consulted without checking other sources. This is, of course, baloney. Anyone who lives in Israel could tell you that B'Tselem is a highly politicized organization. Benny Morris recently charged (free reg' reqd) Human Rights Watch for using a one-sided (Palestinian) version of events in Jenin in 2002, and Gerald Steinberg has shown that they did the same with regard to IDF operations in Rafah in 2004. Obviously, this does not mean that reports from Human Rights NGOs are worthless, just that they need to be viewed critically.

Someone examining said reports needs to ask themselves questions such as - Did the organization get both sides of the story? Is their report based on facts and proper context? etc. Finkelstein, apparently, can not be bothered with this. His response on his site (NO, I will NOT link to him) to the Israeli findings that it was not responsible for the Gaza family incident is simply to post Human Rights Watch's response. Never mind that the "expert" testimony is problematic. For Finkelstein, the HRW report is correct simply because it is stated by them. No legitamite scholar (that I know of) would use such methods.

Though I have not read, and don't intend to read, Finkelstein's screed on alleged Israeli human rights violations, I can't help but wonder whether he uses the same type of ipse dixit ("because I say so") argumentation in that work as well. If this is indeed the case, then there really is no need to "refute" the book as one commentator has asked me to do. There is no reason to grant scholarly legitamacy to such sophistry.

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.

Checkmate

Benny Morris wipes the floor with the "Israel Lobby" in the New Republic (free reg. required), exposing their errors, as well as their misrepresentation of his work. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

The Company He Keeps

Our resident Middle East "expert" Norman Finkelstein continues to dig himself into a hole, this time by openly associating with a cartoonist (well, the cartoonist gave him a good portrayal, after all) who has rather strange political tendencies (I would think that supporting Osama Bin-Laden was beyond the pale...), and whose comparisons, well... (Hat Tip: Whacking Day)

An Hypothesis on the "Israel Lobby" Coverage

A writer for salon.com recently pulled an Alterman in mentioning only op-ed attacks on the "Israel Lobby" and not the ever-increasing amount of scholarly rebuttals, with the exception of Alan Dershowitz's much-publicized rebuttal.

I'm starting to sense a pattern here. The cynic in me says that, of course, "Israel critics" will only mention emotional attacks and ignore more temperate ones in order to set up a straw man of "hysterical ranting" on the part of Israel defenders. Still, I'm starting to think that there's a more prosaic reason for this behavior.

Put simply, the MSM only pays attention to itself. Only op-eds or newspaper articles, where there is very little space to conduct academic argument, are mentioned, as are "celebrities" such as Alan Dershowitz or "anti-celebrities" such as Norman Finkelstein. Rebuttals posted on non-MSM websites such as Jewish institutions or on (not necesarilly Jewish) blogs, are simply ignored - they don't count.

The fact that the author of the above-mentioned article makes no mention whatsoever of Martin Kramer's site, which has been covering the issue from day 1 and has provided at least two witty and informed rebuttals, says something about the self-contained nature of the MSM. It reminds me of similiar tendencies at academic conferences, where scholars repeat each other and refuse to actually step into the world, outside their little bubble.

Some thoughts on the "Israel Lobby"

1. We have already made mention of Norman Finkelstein's artificial 'scholarly consensus' on 1948, created by only mentioning the scholars who support his view and ignoring those who disagree with him. Lately, Eric Alterman has recently pulled the same shtick, mentioning only the virulent op-ed attacks on the "Israel Lobby", and ignoring the many scholarly rebuttals that make mincemeat of the paper's "scholarly" pretentions. One wonders why folks do stuff like this...
2. The most well-remembered self-defense of antisemites is that "some of my best friends are Jews". Now this has been replaced by anti-Zionists with "BUT we support the right of Israel to exist". To demonstrate the absurdity of this statement I have made a song, modeled on Dayennu (If you're interested, you could use this as a party game where you match lines with various anti-Zionists. I have added some of my own matches):

   We compare only Jews/Israelis to Nazis on the slightest pretext, BUT we support the right of Israel to exist. (Finkelstein)

   We deny both Zionism and the state of Israel any moral validity, BUT we support the right of Israel to exist. (Finkelstein)

   We swallow wholesale every libel ever made against the Jewish state uncritically, BUT we support the right of Israel to exist. (Walt+ Mearsheimer)

   We support, excuse or 'understand' all attacks against the country and its citizens, BUT we support the right of Israel to exist.

   We deny that the Jews have the right to self-determination as a nation, or that they even are a nation, BUT we support the right of Israel to exist.

   We believe against all contrary evidence that Israel is the sole, or one of the main causes of danger to world peace, BUT we support the right of Israel to exist.

   We support the Right of Return for Palestinian Refugees, which would demographically overwhelm the state and eliminate its raison d'etre, BUT we support the right of Israel to exist. (This is especially egregious) (Again Finkelstein...fill in others here)

   I'm sure I could add others, but I don't have the energy for it now.

Of Note - Fringe Lunatics and Actual Scholars

• Norman Finkelstein, Israel Shahak fan, goes off the deep end, yet again.
• Ali Abunimah joins the 'One-state' (No-Israel) crowd. Big surprise.

In other news,

• Michael Oren's book on America and the Middle East is slated for January of next year.
• Dr. Tamir Goren, whose expertise is Haifa in the Modern Period (and who teaches at Bar-Ilan) has recently come out with a book on Arab Haifa during the War of Independence (in Hebrew - see link to invitation to conference on the book). Recommended.

Agree or Disagree?

Today, instead of posting my own thoughts, I will present to you an interesting argument made in the recent issue of Azure. Readers are invited to discuss it in the Comments box. Emphases are mine.

Honest liberals know that they are not pluralists. They know that the liberal worldview does not recognize the validity of other worldviews, and that it aspires–using all the economic, media, and military means at its disposal–to make itself dominant. Liberalism is not tolerance, liberalism is not pluralism, and admitting this is not a mark against it; it is simply to recognize the difference between the perception of a liberal agenda as the just, indispensable agenda, and “let a thousand flowers bloom.”

But not all liberals are willing to admit this. The greatest teacher of those liberals who are convinced that they are pluralists was Isaiah Berlin. Berlin’s thought, more than any other liberal doctrine formulated in the twentieth century, reveals a conceptual confusion between pluralism and liberalism. At the end of the twentieth century, this confusion did not appear to be critical or potentially dangerous. In the 1990s, with the fall of the Eastern Bloc, with the euphoric rise of capital markets, and with the fashionable post-modernist discourse that flourished in academia, the West celebrated what seemed to be its final victory. For ten years it had no enemies, and when you have no enemies, it is possible to babble on about pluralism, denigrate the “oppressive” culture of the West, and demand that the “voice of the other should also be heard.” The multicultural discourse that flourished at the time did not stand up to scrutiny, because the “other” did not speak. On September 11, 2001, four years after the death of Berlin, we heard the clear voice of the “other.”

Since Osama Bin Laden made his voice heard, every liberal has had to figure out for himself if he really is a pluralist, as he imagined himself to be. This is no longer an academic or theoretical issue. To counter the clear voices of the enemies of the West, the West must speak out clearly, or else it will be defeated. This year, Europe has incurred Muslim riots in France and Muslim unrest in England and Germany; it has enabled the “others” to build mosques in its capitals that nurture hatred of the West. The repercussions of this foolishness in the name of pluralism were foreseeable but are still being denied. French intellectuals were quick to interpret–and justify–the riots in Paris by portraying them as acts of protest by the poor and the downtrodden. They presented the issue as a social struggle, and in so doing exempted themselves from the question of pluralism. When the Muslim “other” is portrayed as oppressed, his true and declared identity as a jihadist soldier is denied, and so the test facing multicultural pluralism in our time is rejected. Understanding Berlin’s philosophical doctrine, therefore, has become a pressing matter for our time.

That Does It!

"I wish to register a complaint!" - First line in the immortal Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch

Today, I attended an all-day conference. As usual, most of it was torture. This time, however, my wrath will be directed not at the lecturers, but at the audience. Look, I hate conferences just as much as the next human being. I don't object to people sleeping, reading a book (I tried both today) or doing something to pass the time that doesn't disturb others. Unfortunately, audience members repeatedly disturbed the rest of us by either talking or, more often, by forgetting to shut off their cellphones, which went off at pretty regular intervals during sessions.

I can't be clear enough here - such conduct is disgusting and irresponsible, even if unintentional (in the case of the cellphones). It bothers the audience and the lecturer, and it sends a clear message to the lecturer that said disturber doesn't care to disrupt his presentation.

Put yourself in the position of the lecturer for a minute. S/he worked hard to prepare for an important conference. S/he probably knows that some of the audience will not pay attention, but at least will be respectful and not interfere. Then some jerk(s) start talking loudly, or some phone goes off with a bad rendition of classical music. If you do this often - imagine yourself at the podium and understand why this is so repulsive.

So, please, when you're in a conference, KEEP QUIET AND TURN OFF THE G-D DAMN PHONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Read it and Weep (Religious Zionism)

The results are in, and the Right was clobbered. Now would be a good time for the "not one inch" and "orange rising" crowd to read the following article on said crowds' delusions. It's do or die now, ladies and gentlemen.

Students, Teachers and E-mails

Prof. Lehman-Wilzig's weekly post (in Hebrew) discusses a relatively new problem for lecturers - the ability of students to send e-mails rather than only meet them at the office or call them up at home. On the one hand, this makes it much easier for students to communicate with their teachers and ask questions (even send papers in some cases!). On the other hand, students often send e-mails on relatively trivial matters since it's so easy to send them. They also can forget, due to the distance involved, that the lecturer is not their equal or friend and that their authority needs to be respected.

Personally I have had quite a bit of e-correspondence with teachers, both within my university and without. My experience with this has been somewhat mixed. For instance, the response time of a teacher varies from a few days to a few weeks to never. Also, their policy with regard to sending papers via the net is different - some do and some don't allow this. The biggest variable is our relationship afterward - most correspondence is business-like discussion of courses, and in one case I still maintain a correspondence on various matters. At the other extreme, I made the bad mistake of becoming too flippant with a teacher of mine on a number of occasions, and due to this and other matters, we are no longer on speaking terms.

I would like to make the following suggestions to both students and teachers when writing e-mails. Students first:

1. Don't ask questions unless they are very important and can't wait until the next class.
2. Your professor is not your bosom buddy. He/She deserves appropriate respect even if he/she appears to be overly friendly.
3. Consolidate requests into one e-mail rather than spreading them out over several e-mails. It makes things easier.

Now for the teachers:

1. At the beginning of the course, you should state your "e-mail policy". This should include: type of questions and their frequency, the length of time it will take for you to respond (if you intend to), whether students can send papers via e-mail etc.
2. Corollary: Since students rarely get it the first time, and since many don't show up, repeat the "e-mail policy" statement throughout the course.
3. Give students the benefit of the doubt if they don't show the proper deference the first time around (If you hold by such things).

I hope this will help. AIWAC

The Full Monty

Much discussion has been caused by a recent article in the London Review of Books (available here with footnotes, batteries not included), which attacks the evil Israel Lobby, and regurgitates virtually every anti-Israel canard currently on the market, accepting them hook, line and sinker. This article is the most extensive and thorough piece of anti-Israel propaganda now available online, one so full of BS that it would take a week with a full team of experts to completely rebut it. On the other hand, the article also presents an opportunity. Its very thoroughness presents Israel's defenders with a chance to come face to face with the entire laundry-list of charges and rip them to shreds.

Where would one start though? How's about the regurgitated libel that Israel massacred hundreds of Egyptian POW's in '67. This charge was originally brought by James Bamford who allegged that Israel bombed the USS Liberty to cover up the crime. It was rebutted years ago by Dr. Michael Oren in the New Republic, who showed that Bamford's "evidence" was no such thing. The authors merely bring Bamford's evidence, blissfully unaware of the rebuttal.

What about the contention that the only argument regarding the Palestinian Refugee Problem is not whether it what ethnic cleansing - they claim it was - but rather, it is whether it was born by war or design? This statement is a repetition of our good friend Norman Finkelstein's claim that there is a consensus that the Paslestinian Refugee Problem was caused by Israel 'ethnically cleansing' them. [He claims to rely on 'leading scholars' such as Morris, Kimmerling and Pappe. Kimmerling is a sociologist, not an historian, and is known for his anti-Israel views. Pappe is about as objective and reliable as, well, Norman Finkelstein. Pappe is hardly a 'leading scholar' nowadays. Not only has his reputation been tarnished over the Tantura affair, his 'History of Modern Palestine' was destroyed for stupid and elementary factual errors. Even scholars sympathetic to his viewpoint such as Stephen Howe and Charles Smith, had to point out such blunders as the claim that Deir Yassin is near Haifa (it's near Jerusalem).]

The only 'concensus' exists in the fertile minds of Finkelstein, Walt & Co. Many prominent historians of the relevant period - Joseph Heller, Yoav Gelber, Anita Shapira, Mordechai Bar-On, Efraim Karsh and others have disputed many of Morris' arguments, especially when it comes to his belief that 'transfer' was a central part of Zionist thinking during 1937-1948. Prof. Alon Kadish and Prof. Avraham Sela (Hebrew University) recently disputed Morris' claim of a massacre and premeditated expulsion in Lydda in the Middle East Journal. Of course, since most of this debate takes place in Hebrew-Language and 'Zionist' journals such as Zion and Cathedra, or by evil 'Zionists', we can forgive these 'Israel Experts' from failing to actually read what non-fringe historians say. BTW, I actually read Morris' revised book, not just his much-publicized interviews, and nowhere did I find a statement that an 'ethnic cleansing' had taken place.

I hope this helps contribute to the thorough demolition of these libels. Readers are invited to add more in the Comments Box or in other forums.

The Israel Shahak Fan Club Redux

We have had opportunity on this blog to make mention of one Israel Shahak, Jewish anti-semite, and his band of followers from the looney left. Now it turns out that the distinguished Middle East Policy Council openly endorses Shahak's views on Zionism and Israel, apparently unaware of the man's openly hateful and distorted views of Judaism.

Those who read this blog are invited to write this organization and protest this inadvertant support for a hate-mongerer.

An Attempt at a Fisking of an Anti-Zionist

A recent self-righteous and rather childish rant in favor of "debating Zionism" has prompted me to make my first attempt at a fisking. Here goes:

The debate over Zionism going on in Jewish communities is as old as Zionism itself. It did not end after the Holocaust, and it did not end conclusively with the founding of the State of Israel.

So far as I know, it was settled, and the majority of Jews accepted the existence of Israel. The mere existence of a debate does not mean that both sides are equally legitamate, accepted or relevant. There are still people who argue in favor of the South's right to secede in the Civil War. The fact that there were still a few insignificant minority voices such as the ACJ is irrelevant. Moreover, I would like to see some evidence for this sweeping statement.

The champions of Zionism among Jews seem to have become a majority only after the 1967 war, but even then there was a significant minority of non-Zionists in any Jewish society.

Surely someone who participated in a debate knows that one needs to present evidence for their claims. Rather than do so, Baram simply claims that "it seems" this was the case. As such, there's nothing to refute.

However, it seems that the more powerful the Zionism trend has become among Jews, the more hysterical its supporters have turned. They engage in constant stable-cleaning, sniffing for dissidents behind every curtain, finding non-Zionists under each cupboard.

Once again, "it seems" that this is the case, and there's no need for evidence. If Baram had done any historical research at all, she would have known that arguments between Zionists and anti-Zionists were no less heated prior to 1967 (and the anti-Zionists gave as good as they got). One need only read Rory Miller's study on Jewish anti-Zionists in Britain during 1945-48, and the Zionists' fight aginst them, to know this. As they say, a little learning...

...Reading the responses of Emanuele Ottolenghi ("Jews against Israel," February 22) and Melanie Phillips (in her infamous blog) to the recent debate over Zionism held in Cambridge in which Brian Klug, Richard Kuper and myself argued for alternatives to Zionism, one would think that Israel was not a nuclear regional superpower possessing the fourth most powerful army in the world, but a shaky sanctuary where Jews are annihilated by the thousands every day.

Let's see, on the one hand "we" argue against the very raison d'etre of the State, and then we wonder why our opponents are jumpy (I wonder if they would feel the same way if people who debated "alternatives" to Palestinian nationalism countered that "one would think that the Palestinians aren't the darlings of the international community, and coddled at every turn"). Then we throw in an utterly irrelevant remark about the strength of the country's military, as if that has anything to do with the diplomatic attempts to dismantle it. Surely Baram knows the difference between apples and oranges.

BUT ARE WE really not strong enough to have such a debate? Abraham Leon's book arguing against Zionism was smuggled out of Auschwitz; Algerian dissident Abraham Sarfati held on to his non-Zionist criticism even after years of imprisonment in Algiers for his opposition to the local regime. Zionism is not an obvious response to suffering or to persecution. If those people, true Jewish heroes, kept on debating the subject while exposed to the most horrible perils, so, surely, can we.

Once again, so you get the point, the existence of a debate does not make it ipso facto legitamite. One must prove such a point. Appeals to authority (so and so debated Zionism) do not convince. The second point is even more laughable. Zionism was an obvious response to persecution - it remains an historic fact that many Jews became Zionists because of it, even prior to the Holocaust. Hovevei Zion was a reaction to persecution. Once again, however, this would require knowing history.

...One can only wonder what really poses a danger to fellow Jews - Brian Klug's suggestion that Jewish existence not center around Israel (he never said "There's no place in this world for nationalism")? Richard Kuper's revulsion over Israel's behavior in the West Bank? My own claim that Israel should belong to all its citizens? Or maybe, as one dead prime minister might tell us, were he able, it is those who wildly incite against anybody who dares divert from the party line.

Wow. Baram really pulls out all the stops on this one. First there's the support for nationalism for everyone except Jews. Then there's the "revulsion" over the West Bank, which does not have a bearing on the argument itself, which is about Zionism in general. We also get the obligatory support for a "state of all its citizens" without any explanation as to what that means. The icing on the cake is of course the not-so subtle "Rabin-murderer" smear that still has not gotten old.

FYI, Ms. Baram, Rabin, for all his faults, was a convinced Zionist to the end of his days, and he must now be rolling in his grave seeing you abuse his murder to render yourself immune to criticism so you can smear the country. It's very sad that this is the current level of intelligent debate at Cambridge...

Karsh VS. Pappe

Efraim Karsh demolishes Ilan Pappe's new book, while (justifiably, IMHO) blasting Cambridge University Press for having published such a poor work. Read the whole thing.

PS Check out Benny Morris' demolition as well. AIWAC