Academic Subterfuge

I do not read Spanish. Well, not that well. But this article of academic subterfuge caught my attention (bear with me).

It starts with a "premise assumption" which means the author asserts a definition that is made up and goes on from there to misrepresent a reality.
Here is an abstract from an academic article from Madrid, Más allá del “conflicto”: Palestina y las estructuras profundas de la colonización global by John Collins and notice all the academic gobbledygook:

This article seeks to relocate the analysis of violence in Palestine within an alternative paradigm that emphasizes long-term processes of global colonization. Beginning from the premise that Palestine is a site of an ongoing settler-colonial project (Zionism) rather than a simple “conflict,” it views contemporary realities as overdetermined by the deep structures that this project has put in place. Using the work of Paul Virilio as a key theoretical touchstone, it explores Palestine’s microcosmic and often prophetic embeddedness in three overlapping colonial modes: exocolonization (the colonization of territories outside one’s own), endocolonization (the colonization of specific populations within the territory under one’s control in the context of permanent or “pure” war), and dromocolonization (the colonization of humanity by techno-scientific acceleration). Examination of these three modes not only sheds light on Zionism’s specific colonial practices (e.g., the exclusion and confinement of Palestinians), but also encourages us to think beyond actor-centered conceptions of politics and consider the impact of processes (e.g., militarization or acceleration) that stretch beyond the control of rational actors. In particular, we see how Palestine has become a laboratory for new forms of warfare and social control whose global implications cannot be overestimated. With this in mind, the article concludes by arguing that an exploration of the challenges and possibilities of decolonization in Palestine can help us think through what global decolonization might mean.

By the way, do you think this - "how Palestine has become a laboratory for new forms of warfare" - refers to suicide bombing?

I am assuming it is a version of this article of his, Between Acceleration and Occupation: Palestine and the Struggle for Global Justice in Vol 4, No 2 (2010), a Special Issue on Opening a Dialogue on Migrant (Rights) Activism of Studies in Social Justice.

Oddly enough, on the background of the claim of "illegal settlements" is this article there: "No One is Illegal Between City and Nation" by Peter Nyers which highlights this:

“I’m illegal. So what?” — T-shirt slogan, “A Day Without Immigrants,” New York City, May 1, 2006

Although the issue is citizenship of immigrants, I found this conclusion quite relevant to the matter of Jews asserting rights in their historic national homeland:

...On the one hand, the most immediate concern is to pressure governments, both local and national, to regularize the legal status of all non-status migrants. While contesting territory within the zone of illegality, the movement nonetheless grounds its key demands within the law. On the other hand, these are clearly acts that call the law into question, and even break it. To become recognized as responsible it would seem that acts of irresponsibility must be undertaken. Street protests need to be organized; the offices of bureaucrats with authority to stop a deportation need to be occupied; claims must be made by those without the authority to speak; rights must be taken by those who have no right to have rights. In these ways and many others, politicized groups of non-status migrants are enacting themselves as citizens even when the law does not recognize them as such.

Again, we witness not only the corruption of language, the perverting of historical chronicles, the presentation of irrational logic and more but also the hypocrisy of the liberal/progressive approach to society and politics.

We Jews resident in Judea and Samaria have so much more rights to be where we are than any "illegal immigrant" but what is offered as a correct policy - adoption of illegal acts - is denied to us.

^

The Churning of Chernus

On Monday, April 18, 2011, Ira Chernus posted this piece at Salon (and also at Huffingtion Post - and Lefties complain they are restricted in getting their message across), entitled:

Three myths of Israel's insecurity

With this message:

It's time to debunk the idea that the Jewish state's existence is under constant threat

If there's any debunking to be done, I fear that Chernus is the object of the exercise.  Chernus is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and he blogs. He proclaims he studies issues of war and peace and U.S. foreign policy from the perspective of a historian of religions.

To give you an idea of his thinking, here's an abstract from a 2009 article, Order and Disorder in the Definition of Peace:-

Both social science and American cultural discourse have traditionally defined peace in terms of predictable order. It is important to analyze this definition carefully to develop a persuasive critique of it. Cultures that value order above all else actually end up focusing on and increasing their sense of disorder for a variety of reasons discussed here. Defining peace solely in terms of order exacerbates this process, increasing peacelessness as well as injustice in several ways. Chaos theoy and clinical psychology suggest an alternative view of peace as an interplay of order and disorder that transcends the opposition between them. Instances of peace researchers (J. Galtung) and peace movements representing this alterntive definition of peace are also discussed.

That is a bit disorderly.  What has order to do with it?  In our case (and more about that later), it is the disorder of the Arab side, making false assertions and demanding false rights that lie at the basis of the lack of peace, not to mention the disorderly thinking of academics and partisans like Chernus that complicate matters.
In another 2000 article on Jerusaalem, Chernus would have us believe that

Even today, there is no unanimous opinion among Jews about Jerusalem. In the U.S., polls consistently show that only about 60% of Jews insist on full Israeli sovereignty over the entire city. The number may be somewhat higher in Israel. But there, too, a substantial minority is willing to trade full sovereignty for peace.

"May be"? But there are polls, just in case you think Chernus is correct.  Here's one from 2007:

Most Israelis would oppose partitioning Jerusalem under a peace deal with the Palestinians, a poll found. According to Tuesday's survey in Yediot Achronot, 61 percent of Israelis would not agree to any compromise on the status of the capital within the framework of a peace accord. Twenty-one percent said they would accept a partition, while the rest -- 16 percent -- said ceding control of east Jerusalem should first be put to a referendum in Israel. Sixty-one percent of respondents said Israel should retain control of the Temple Mount, even if Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem are transferred to Palestinian control. Sixteen percent said there should be shared Israeli-Palestinian control over the Temple Mount, while 22 percent called for the disputed religious site to fall under international sovereignty. One percent had no response.

and Ariel Zellman, this year, quotes the results of another poll:

conducted by Pechter Middle East Polls for the Council of Foreign Relations and the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, [that]showed that Arab residents of East Jerusalem may actually prefer to live under Israeli sovereignty rather than a Palestinian state. Conducted in the 19 Arab neighborhoods of “East Jerusalem,” it included a representative sample of 1039 people with a 3% margin of error. When asked if they preferred under a two-state solution to be citizens of a Palestinian state with all accordant rights or the citizens of Israel with all accordant rights, only 30% chose Palestinians citizenship. 35% chose Israeli citizenship while 35% either refused to answer or did not know. Asked about the preferences of “most people in your neighborhood,” 31% estimated a preference for Palestinian citizenship, 39% for Israeli citizenship, and 30% declined to answer or had no response.

When asked if they would move into Israel should their neighborhood become a part of a Palestinian state, 40% responded affirmatively, while only 27% said they would move to a Palestinian state if their neighborhood were to become Israeli. Among those who chose Israeli citizenship, they cited freedom of movement in Israel, higher income and job opportunities, and Israeli health insurance as their reasons.

and already in 1980, the 60%+ support recorded by Harris was termed a "sizable majority".  Does Chernus allow facts to get in the way of his outlook?  But is there unanimity amongst Jews on any issue?

Given this introduction, you'd be excused to presume that Chernus' "religion" is a form of political ideology rooted in a leftwing near-anarchist radicalism.  His poor students.  His poor "God".

In his new piece noted above, in which he goes over material he has previously presented over the years, he relates to

Three Sacred Commandments for Americans who shape the public conversation on Israel

and they are:

1. For politicians...As soon as you say the word "Israel," you must also say the word "security" and promise that the United States will always, always, always be committed to Israel's security...

2. For TV talking heads and op-ed pundits: If you criticize any policies or actions of the Israeli government, you must immediately add that Israel does, of course, have very real and serious security needs that have to be addressed.

3. For journalists covering the Israel-Palestine conflict for major American news outlets: You must live in Jewish Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv and take only occasional day trips into the Occupied Territories. So your reporting must inevitably be slanted toward the perspective of the Jews you live among. And you must indicate in every report that Jewish Israeli life is dominated by anxiety about security.

This is a skewed view, or a straw-man technique.  But Chernus goes 'better'.  His piece is long and so I will select of few excerpt and intersperse with my comments:

...U.S. opinion-shapers have obeyed the Three Commandments scrupulously for decades [not really.  Israel has been subjected to political and media bias from before the state's establishment.  In fact, given the Iranian threat, the 90 year old Arab terror campaign and a half-dozen wars, why wouldn't anyone think of Israel within the frame of security?]...the right-wing "pro-Israel" (more accurately, "pro-Israeli-government") lobby...certainly is a skillful, well-oiled machine. It uses every trick in the PR book to promote the myth of Israel as a brave little nation constantly forced to fight for its life against enemies all around who are eager to destroy it, a Jewish David withstanding the Arab Goliath [no tricks are needed.  In 1947, Arabs began declaring their intentions of a war of extermination. and they continued to seek the fulfillment of that goal for over six decades.  The slaughter of five family members in their beds last month was simply because they were Jews - "In the questioning, they said that their motive was simply to kill Jews and Israelis"].

...Israel still maintains a decisive edge over any of its neighbors ["any" but not all together or any multiple coalition or, and here's the crucial element, if Iran goes nuclear, while, say, Egypt stops exporting gas to Israel, which is 40% of what the country uses].

...Israel spends far more on its military than any of the neighbors it claims to fear, largely because it gets more military aid from the U.S. than any other Mideast nation -- $3 billion a year is the official figure...[pssst, the annual US aid to Egypt is $1.3 billon]...

Myth Number 2: The personal safety of every Jewish Israeli is threatened daily by the possibility of violent attack. In fact, according to Israeli government statistics, since the beginning of 2009 only one Israeli civilian (and two non-Israelis) have been killed by politically motivated attacks inside the green line (Israel's pre-1967 border) [but that figure does not include the many dozens of attempted attacks that have failed due to Israel's sense of insecurity which causes it to be vigilant and ever on the alert - see his myth #1 above].  As a result, the insecurity myth has come to focus on rockets -- the real ones launched from Gaza and the imaginary ones that supposedly could be launched from a future Palestinian state in the West Bank [no, not imaginary as there have already been attempts in 2006 to fire from Samaria as well as a laboratory found in Shchem.  Cernus is either ignorant or a liar]...

... The Palestinians, of course, have access to none of the high-tech Israeli guidance systems. Their weaponry tends to be crude and often homemade. They shoot their rockets, most of them unguided, and let them fall where they may (which means the vast majority harm no one) [so, to be fair, Israel has to either dumbdown its tactical advantage or permit the local Arabs to improve their weaponery??? what would serve Chernus' idea of 'peace' better???].

...The logic of the myth goes back to the premise of the earliest Zionists: All gentiles are implacably and eternally anti-semitic. By this logic, any attack on one Jew, no matter how random, becomes evidence that all Jews are permanently threatened with extinction [well, since Cernus believes in the importance of evidence, the constant and non-stop terror campaign by local Arabs against Jews since the first pogrom of April 1920 to May 1921, to August 1929 to April 1936 through May 1939 and until the fedayeen and the PLO and the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad and the Hezbollah has no relevance?] .

Most Zionists have been unable to see that once they founded a state committed to regional military superiority, they were bound to be on the receiving as well as the giving end of acts of war [no, I, for one, do not think that the establishment of Israel justifies any violence against it, against its citizens or against any Jew].
...Myth Number 3: Israel's existence is threatened by worldwide efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state...There are shreds of truth in it. There have always been people who saw the Jewish state, imposed on indigenous Palestinians, as illegitimate...and that the specter of becoming a "pariah state" does pose a danger...Survival? No. After all, being a pariah state doesn't have to be existence threatening, as North Korea and Burma have proved [note how he agrees that Israel is a "pariah state".  how does one make peace with a pariah state?  is Chernus being a bit prejudicial is his logic in order to convince his readers of his outlook rather than dealing with the truth?].

...what if the American public knew the facts that Obama acknowledged? What if every solemn reference to Israel's "security needs" were greeted not with nodding heads, but with the eye-rolling skepticism it deserves? What if Israel's endless excesses and excuses -- its claims that the occupation of the West Bank and the economic strangulation of Gaza are necessary "for the sake of security" -- were regularly scoffed at by most Americans?  It's hard to imagine the Obama administration, or any American administration, keeping up a pro-Israel tilt in the face of such public scorn [which is exactly the object of Chernus' exercise - to convince his readers to be not only skeptical but that Israel's claims are unworthy of belief by relying on falsehoods, halftruths and faulty logic of induction.  his is rabble-raiser, not an academic]...

If you think Chernus has adhewred to a rigorous academic standard in what he published you can contact his place of employment and congratulate them for paying him a salary to influence BA and MA students at the university. And if your view of his logic and presentation is more negative, you still can contact his department, here:


Department of Religious Studies
292 UCB, Eaton Humanities 240
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0292
Telephone: (303) 492-8041
Fax: (303) 735-2080

and the current department chair is Greg Johnson, at greg.johnson@colorado.edu.

His students should, at the very least, be warned of his invidious conduct.

Maybe even let the local Hillel know.  The local Jewish community.


P.S.

And read Israel Matzav.

And EOZ.
^

Practicing Academic Genocide

I have just read an article and a blog post.

The blog post is here at EOZ and, with help from Ovagoy, he quotes a Ken O'Keefe who says that Jews who do not criticize Israel are like pre-war Germans.

This is an example of a growing opinion, first coming from the antisemites and now seeping into academia and columnists, that Israel's actions in defending itself against Arab terror (deed) and Arab negation (thought) of the Jewish people's peoplehood is somehow Nazism.

Gaza is no less than a concentration camp. Israelis soldiers are Gestaspo. The rhetoric increases all the time.

Which leads me to the article I was sent this past week and finished reading last night. I admit, I was surprised. I had assumed that this Germanic comparison ranting was off-the-edge. It isn't. My ignorance embarrassed me.

I was aware of a pro-Pal. activist who seems to have sold his soul for falafel. Here is Francis A. Boyle, currently Professor in International Law at University of Chicago in 1997 demanding:

that the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine and its President institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague (the so-called World Court) for violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. I am sure we can all agree that Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian People

and in 2009 he wrote

[this is what] Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity. Expressed in legal terms, this is just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews

But the article immediately in question (and there may be others) entitled is "The question of genocide in Palestine, 1948: an exchange between Martin Shaw and Omer Bartov" and was published in the Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 12, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 243 – 259. In a previous article which led directly to this latest Shaw-Bartov "discussion", he set out his goal:

This article discusses what may be involved in treating the 1948 destruction of a large part of Arab society in Palestine as 'genocide'. It argues that genocide is a general sociological concept which can be applied to many historical cases varying in scale, murderousness, ideological motivation, etc., so applying genocide analysis does not imply a comparison to any other specific case. The article analyses the Palestinian case in the context of an international perspective on the historical development of genocide, and discusses the significance of differences over the historical explanation of the 1948 events for a genocide perspective.

He explains in the article, and repeats in his discussion with Omer Bartov, Professor at Brown University and chair of its Department of History, his

...justification for introducing a genocide perspective. It proceeds from the assumption that genocide is an important concept of social and historical analysis, and that applying a genocide perspective will help us to explore and explain the Palestinian crisis of the last six decades in an illuminating way. In order that a genocide perspective can fulfill this role, however, it is necessary to discuss what genocide means, why the concept is important, and how it should be used in historical analysis.

The key to his approach is two-fold: fudge historical facts (he admits to lack of Hebrew comprehension which nevertheless does not interefe with hius analysis of the Hebrew words tihur ('cleaning') and 'shoah' (Holocaust but not always and adopt a new definition.

For example, he suggests that

we need also to pay attention to how prevalent a genocidal mentality was among nationalist elites in Eastern Europe – the milieu in which Zionism itself was formed. It had become normal, in formulating a project for a nationally homogenous state, to envisage removing populations who did not fit (italics in original).

and then takes it a step further off the cliff:

The proposal here is therefore that we should view Israel's destruction of large parts of Arab society in Palestine in 1948 not simply through the perspective of settler-colonial genocide, but as an extension of the exclusivist nationalism which had recently brought about extensive genocidal violence in the European war – and perhaps even (given the complex connections between the different branches of Zionist power involved in forcing the removal of the Palestinian population) as in some senses like the 'post-colonial' genocide of the Indian Partition.

He then tries to cover his mendaciousness while carrying forth the banner of prejudice:

To return to Palestine: clearly no one contends that Israel intended to commit the extensive mass murder of the Arab population, and so in terms of a narrow understanding of genocide, there is no case to discuss. The Nakba was not the Final Solution, and a simple comparison of the two is utterly inappropriate, even if earlier episodes in the Nazi genocide of the Jews, such as the 1939-40 expulsion from western Poland into ghettos in central Poland, provide more debatable comparisons

His definition of genocide simple alters the meaning. Dominate the vocabulary and lexicon and only you can use words, I would say, if I could. For him:

Genocidal action aims not just to contain, control, or subordinate a population, but to shatter and break up its social existence. Thus genocide is defined, not by a particular form of violence, but by general and pervasive violence...even if we may distinguish genocide from war or repression, in historical reality they are usually closely related. [italics in the original)

So to say, it is not what I do and accomplish and moreover, I don't really have to kill and destroy building but severely damage social institutions, but how I do it. If I act violently but do not actually eradicate a population, perhaps it isn't genocide?

He continues this 'withdraw-proceed' maneuver at the end:

in Gaza in 2009, Israel did not aim to destroy Palestinian society, but to impose a severe collective punishment on that society for its support of Hamas, while attempting to destroy, physically as well as militarily, that organisation itself. (Ironically it was the attempt to assassinate Hamas members, killing their families, which seemed closer to genocide than the punishment of the general population.) I draw a rather different conclusion: the consequence of a society founded on genocide in these circumstances is a situation of more or less permanent war. So long as Israel does not come to terms with the genocide of 1948 and its enduring injustice, its leaders will continue to resort to brutal, degenerate war as a method of keeping the Palestinians in their place. A society thus founded cannot hope either for integrity or for security.

So, with a wave of a wand and the mutterings of some hocus-pocus, the definition of genocide is altered, broadened and made facile but all the more applicable to cases of conflict where genocide not only didn't take place but was not intended even if a claim of 'transfer' is arguable. Genocide is not only about people but a society.

Bartov makes a very good rebuttal and you'll have to read him but I do not have it on-line at the moment. Nevertheless, one thing Bartov could have emphasized is that persons like Shaw simply avoid the genocidal nature of the local Arab movement in Mandate Palestine, something I touched upon in my review (Part I; II; III; IV) of Norman Rose's new book - woeful as the book is -, especially in the new research (but basically known and published decades ago) that traces the Mufti's complete identification with and willingess to serve Nazism (see here; and here; and also here)

By refusing to confront this history, the actual ethnic cleansing of Jews from locations they resided in for centuries - and not the "new Zionist colonies" - such as Hebron, gaza nd Shchem/Nablus as well as Gush Etzion, Tel Hai and Neveh Yaakov as well as Jeruslame's Old City quarter - Shaw and others are not only revealing their ignorance but their unwillingness to be objective scholars. And they act as apologists for genocidal tendencies that were acted out and still form the foundation of Arab hostility to Israel.

Could I suggest that Shaw, et al. are engaged in a genocidal operation against the national idea and the hsitorical record of the Jewish people in Eretz-Yisrael, its historic homeland?


(see, too, my Green-Lined version at the JPost.)
_______________________
Prof. Bartov can be contacted at Omer_Bartov@Brown.EDU
Prof. Shaw can be contacted at martinshaw34@gmail.com

==============

UPDATE

Now see this.

^

Academic Anti-Israel Mobilization

Two academics claim:-

Most Israelis see Palestinians as inherently, fundamentally, uncontingently hostile, wishing only to “throw us into the sea.’’ Similarly, Palestinians see Israel as unshakably determined to expel them from their land.

Based on this, they further claim:-

We found that the violence on each side is not arbitrary. Instead, a few days after Palestinians kill Israelis, Israel retaliates by killing Palestinians, and in the few days after Israel kills Palestinians, the number of rockets fired into Israel increases. Thus, both Palestinians and Israelis are more likely to attack after they themselves have been attacked.

From that, they continue:

These findings refute the common view that because the conflict results from the immutably hostile character of the foe, there is nothing either side can do to stop it. Our data suggest that the conflict is not the inevitable result of the fundamentally violent character of either Israelis or Palestinians. Instead, the violence of each side is at least in part contingent on the behavior of the other side.

And then it is another step for them to conclude:

Even Israelis who lament the occupation of Palestinian lands often argue that it is necessary for Israeli security, a view that is reinforced by the Israeli perception of Palestinian violence as inevitable. But our finding that Palestinian violence arises in response to Israel’s behavior suggests instead that ending the occupation of Palestinian land is not a painful concession that Israel should make in exchange for something else, but a step that is in Israel’s own narrow self interest.

The authors are Nancy Kanwisher, professor of neuroscience at MIT and Anat Biletzki, professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University and Quinnipiac University. Biletzki is a far-out leftist post-Zionist activist. She supported Azmi Bishara, suspected spy and Arab nationalist. Israel Academic Monitor provides a lot of background (start here).

Nancy pinch-hits for Hamas.

But who needs that?

Simple knowledge of Jewish history will inform you that even Jabotinsky backed off from transfer, at least until 1939,

I am reputed to be an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected from Palestine, and so forth. It is not true. Emotionally, my attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations – polite indifference. Politically, my attitude is determined by two principles. First of all, I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority. And secondly, I belong to the group that once drew up the Helsingfors Programme , the programme of national rights for all nationalities living in the same State. In drawing up that programme, we had in mind not only the Jews, but all nations everywhere, and its basis is equality of rights.

but it didn't help: the Arabs defined their anti-Zionist struggle as inherently violent.

Let's not forget the PLO Covenant:

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it. They also assert their right to normal life in Palestine and to exercise their right to self-determination and sovereignty over it.

Article 10: Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution.

in addition to all we know of pre-state terror as well as the Jewish method - buying land.

Again, academic mobilized ideological anti-Israel political garbage masquerading as science.

- - -

Check here

and here

and here.

- - -

So, Now They'll Be Teaching About "Palestine" in Columbia

Reported:

"Columbia launched the first-ever Center for Palestine Studies in the United States on Thursday night, and organizers said that, despite limited funds, they are pushing forward. The center, which will run out of the University’s Middle East Institute in Knox Hall, was created by a group of faculty with the goal of promoting and advancing Palestine studies in a wide range of subjects, from politics to the arts.

...The center was also created in honor of former professor Edward Said, who taught at Columbia for 40 years before his death in 2003 and is widely known for his book “Orientalism.”

...The goals of the center, which has been in discussion since late 2009, focus on the promotion of scholarship in Palestinian history, culture, arts, and literary studies. “One of the missions of the center is to inform people about the Palestinians in an academic setting,” said Bashir Abu-Manneh, an English professor at Barnard...details of its funding are not yet clear — a fact that caused concern among attendees at Thursday’s event...Rashid Khalidi, co-director of the center, said in a speech at the launch that the center has little funding thus far and is soliciting donations...Khalidi said that they are just starting to implement programs. “Our activities, that are almost all in the planning stage, include lectures, conferences, art screenings, and developing archives.”
For some students, the center is an opportunity to emphasize Palestinian studies in the classroom...

Okay, I'll be concise in my reaction.

Is this to be a "no-Jews" center?

Is "Palestine" a state-to-be or a geographic territory?

If the second, who teaches about the Jews that came there, that lived there, that had stayed there for centuries, how they were treated by the majority Arab population and the various regimes - Roman, Persian, Byzantine, Arab, Crusdaer, Mameluks, Ottoman, British and Jordan?

Will there religious, cultural, agricultural, scientific, etc. accomplishments over the centuries be mentioned? The first printing press in the Middle East? Kabbalah?

And as for Columbia's Jews:

“I think that this is a significant moment for Columbia University, if only because the lack of knowledge about Palestinians and Palestine is pervasive,” Yinon Cohen, a professor in the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, wrote in an email. “It is, I believe, precisely a center like this that can begin changing this reality.”

“It is so groundbreaking for the University as a whole,” said Aviva Buechler, BC ’11 and president of Columbia/Barnard Hillel. “With their mission of studying the history, culture, and politics of Palestine, I think it will really be a great experience for students to take part in.”

Oiy.

- - -

From Argentina To Turkey - Via Israel

I guess it takes all types but this fellow is definitely one of the more weird ones out there exploiting academic terminology to pervert truth:-

An U.S.-based academic who grew up in Israel criticized Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, referring to the conflict as the "colonization of Palestine" during a lecture in Istanbul on Saturday.

...Gabriel Piterberg, a professor of Near East history at the University of California in Los Angeles...[said] “First, this is a conflict between settlers and indigenous people. Second, this is an unresolved settler situation where the settlers are incomparably more powerful, and the natives have not disappeared and will not disappear."

Born in Argentina and raised in Israel, Piterberg...lecture[d] Saturday at Sabancı University, titled "The Zionist Colonization of Palestine in the Comparative Context of Settler Colonialism,"...Piterberg...analyzed the works of two prominent early Zionists, Haim Arlozorov and Arthur Ruppin.

And here comes the kicker:

...Anti-Semitism and “outright racism” were inherent in Ruppin's work, which was intended to “renew the purity of the Jewish race,” Piterberg said. He also made a connection between Ruppin’s work and the social scientists directly involved in the Holocaust.

Like Iran and Neturei Karta, the Holocaust was somehow the fault of the Zionists.

But is Piterburg really an academic or an ideologue disguised as one? Consider this:-

While it’s technically impossible to crown one UCLA professor as the most active on campus, it’s a safe bet to say that history professor Gabriel Piterberg will always rank in the top three. While Piterberg’s dour radicalism would prevent him from earning the title of Miss Congeniality, he has never shown any shyness about promoting his political views, no matter how toxic. Whether it’s condemning the U.S. in print, or damning Israel in speeches, Piterberg is always locked and loaded.

Seems he was in April in Berlin before Turkey:

Gabriel Piterberg examines the ideology and literature behind the colonization of Palestine, from the late nineteenth century [and what about Jews in Erezt-Yisrael coming after the Expulsion from Spain in the first half of the 16th century? Hasisidm in 1777? Jews in Gaza in the 16th century? Jews from Ashkenaz in 1700?] to the present. Exploring Zionism’s origins in Central-Eastern European nationalism and settler movements, he shows how its texts can be placed within a wider discourse of western colonization. Piterberg revisits the work of Theodor Herzl, Gershom Scholem, Anita Shapira and David Ben-Gurion,among other thinkers influential in the formation of the Zionist myth, to break open prevailing views of Zionism. He demonstrates that it was in fact unexceptional, expressing a consciousness and imagination typical of colonial settler movement. Shaped by European ideological currents and the realities of colonial life, Zionism constructed its own story as a unique and impregnable one, in the process excluding the voices of an indigenous people — the Palestinian Arabs.

Such claptrap.


- - -

Killing Me Softly, With His Words

Omar Barghouti is a Researcher, a human rights activist and a proponent of the Palestinian Civil Society Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). He studies at Tel Aviv University. Okay, so boycotts are not the most successful of activities, especially as you personally want to get ahead.

In the journal Contemporary Arab Affairs, Volume 2, Issue 4 October 2009 , pages 576 - 586, you can read this article:

Organizing for self-determination, ethical de-Zionization and resisting apartheid

And here's the abstract:

This paper argues for a secular, democratic state in historic Palestine as the most morally coherent solution to the century-old colonial conflict because it offers the best hope for reconciling the inalienable right of the indigenous Palestinians to self-determination and the acquired rights of the colonial settlers to live in peace and security, individually and collectively. Accepting colonists as equal citizens and full partners in building and developing a new shared society is the most magnanimous offer any oppressed indigenous population can present to its oppressors, but for such to be attained, settlers must shed colonial privileges and character, accept justice, unmitigated equality, and conscious integration into the region. Building a just and lasting peace anchored in international law and universal human rights, conducive to ethical coexistence requires the ethical decolonization, or de-Zionization of historic Palestine.

Such a process is premised on a revitalized, democratized Palestinian civil resistance movement with a clear vision for a shared, just society and effective worldwide support for reaffirming Palestinian rights and ending Israel's violations of international law and universal rights. By emphasizing the equality of humanity as its most fundamental principle, this paper shows that the proposed secular democratic state promises to transcend national and ethnic dichotomies that now make it nearly impossible to envision reaching any just solution to the most intricate questions.

BNotice, we Jews have no inalienable rights. We are colonists. We have privileges. We must integrate. We need to de-Zionize.

But the real unmitigated gall is in his presumption that his own Arab society can be magnanimous, revitalize itself, democratize its resistance movement with anything approaching something clear, that it is willing to share, that it can sustain a just society and itself has not violated international law and universal rights, that it can support the ideal of equality of humanity or that it could possibly evolve into a secular democratic state which will then transcend national and ethnic dichotomies is sheer chutzpah.

Sorry there for not transcending my ethnic peculiarity in using a Yiddishism but, on second thought, aren't we asking for integration?


P.S. I found this comment on a forum for Israeli academics and thought my readers would appreciate the robust manner of discussion:

What’s wrong, Y?

[Y wrote: A better title for this "academic" conference" in that "academic" center would be: "Joe McCarthy, Where Are You Now When We Need You?"]

Don’t you think that this is a reasonable topic for an academic meeting? Did you actually skim the paper titles? Don’t you think that there’s a decent range of papers presented by people from a range of universities across the world? It’s clearly not what you’d organize. But maybe that’s because you’re too busy editing your “academic” journal (does it feel bad when people place quotes around what you do? Or have you grown to enjoy the warm, self-validating thrill of being under attack while sitting tenured and pretty at TAU?).

Assuming that you agree that the question is a reasonable one – i.e., whether, how, and to what extent, practitioners of terror are inspired by different types of intellectual movements – and you actually did skim the paper titles, then I imagine that your objection to the conference is that is does not include a “Critical” perspective. Or at least it does not appear to. Or am I being too charitable? Perhaps your objection is simply the fact that this event is being held in Ariel. (i.e., no matter how good the quality of papers or discussion, one can’t be academic me’ever la kav ha’yarok. One can only be “academic.”)

Leaving the location of Ariel aside: did you skim the paper titles? If so, then your condescension is all the more alienating. For the hell of it, I just used the same “methodology” to skim the journal that you edit and have concluded that it is nothing more than a forum for self-referential hagiographies of “critical” scholars (Critical?), and for papers whose themes, questions and answers are predictable and paradigm-dependent – one paradigm only, please.

If that’s how you like your academic world, then fine. McCarthyism, truly understood, lives on in you. But I personally prefer my academic world to be a little less predictable, and certainly a little more ideologically disordered. The sad fact is, in this sphere of academic activity in Israel, disorder is better represented by the conference at Ariel than by the types of events that you would laud. And yes, this implies that Ariel is the alternative, the resistance, the subaltern. . . Which means that you are . . . well, I don’t need to tell you, of all people, what the opposite of those terms are).

[Full disclosure: I’m not a participant in the conference, don’t know its organizers, and don’t work on terror or Israel.]

A., Associate Professor, Department of Sociology

On this aspect of internal Israeli academics, Steve Plaut wrote:

So let us sum up the learned discussion on the list regarding syllabi and related matters to date. The predominant opinion seems to be that course syllabi should be filled with “criticism,” but that no one should ever be permitted to criticize academic “critics,” because criticizing academic “critics” is McCarthyism and harms academic freedom. Better yet, why not expand the number of courses at Israeli universities that consist entirely of “criticism,” and in which “criticism” is mandatory and enforced? Meanwhile, people like the Im Tirtzu students the Knesset
education committee members, or the watchdog groups like NGO Monitor and Isracampus should have no right to criticize “critics.” After all, such people are threats to academic freedom and accordingly should be made to wear special stars on their clothing, if not banished outright to critical re-education camps in the Arava with names like Newmangrad.

Now one way of dealing with university courses that contain “criticism,” including Marxist critique, anti-Zionism and Israel bashing, is to label them with warning labels. That way students will know what they are signing up to get. After all, cigarette packets contain warning labels. So why can’t we just have warning labels along the lines such as, “This course contains Marxist indoctrination,” or “This course contains postmodernist content” ??

More generally, it should be clear to all that the term “criticism” is commonly misused in academia to refer to Marxist “analysis” and to the “posts.” The Marxist component includes things like Foucault, Hobsbawn, Shenhav, Peled, and so on. The “posts” include postmodernism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, deconstruction, and other things that apparently get their “post” names because they are invented by bored clerks in post offices waiting for people to come in to pick up packages.

Curiously, the Social Science list recently carried numerous postings denouncing pornography. But pornography merely demeans the human body. Marxism destroys the human body (the biggest cause of mass starvation in the 20th century was Marxism) as well as the human mind and soul. So just like we would all want a warning label for a university course in which porn is shown to students in massively overflowing lecture halls, should not a course filled with Marxist mandatory criticism also carry a warning label?

And speaking of post-colonialist thought and starvation, should not critical Israeli political science courses contain the critical analysis of the great post-colonialist thinker Robert Mugabe? A few years back he seriously proposed putting the absence of food in Zimbabwe to advantage by developing weight-loss tourism. Fat people from the capitalist world would be invited to tour Zimbabwe and not eat.

There are so many imaginative ways that the money of the Israeli taxpayer can be put to use in manufacturing criticism!

Academic Freedom Means Free Discussion

I received Professor Itzhak Galnoor's article "Academic Freedom Under Political Duress: Israel" published in "Social Research", Issue: Volume 76, Number 2 / Summer 2009, Pages: 541 - 560, Special Issue: Special Issue: Free Inquiry at Risk: Universities in Dangerous Times, Part I, Published Online: 27 August 2009.

The Abstract:

Political duress within the academic community is a strong sense that there is a threat of external interference with core academic values and freedoms - free inquiry, free speech institutional autonomy and personal safety. After a short introduction to the background of Israeli higher education, this article focuses on two current threats: first, political intimidation originating from extreme nationalistic and religious groups aimed at silencing "nonloyal" voices inside and outside the Universities (for example, the pipe bomb that exploded on September 25, 2008, at the gate of Professor Ze'ev Sternhel's house, wounding him slightly, or the threats on the Israel-Academia-Monitor.com web site); second, a process of "commodification" - political and administrative pressures and the enforcement of a "management" and privatization policies (for example, budget cuts forcing internal institutional changes, shifts of resources, and competition). These steps have been accompanied by antiintellectualism under the slogan of the "democratization of higher education." Academic freedom is under duress in Israel because of the combination of these two attitudes and policies aimed at "taming" higher education.

Professor Steven Plaut took it on (here).

More criticism here and there's an interesting parallel subject here.

I also commented on the article within the Political Science Department list which is on the Social Science List of the Hebrew University.

So far, 10 days later, it has not been distributed.

I wonder why.


Anyway, in the interests of academic freedom, here are my observations as sent in:-

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yisrael Medad
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:23:29 +0200
Subject: Re: [Social Science- IL]: FW: מאמרי על השכלה גבוהה בישראל
To: Itzhak Galnoor

Since the article is in English, I will make my short comments in that language.

1. From an historic retrospective, I am surprised that Prof. Galnoor did not provide more information on the chronicles of the tension between the Hebrew University and its critics from the nationalist camp of Zionism. A most famous incident was the demonstration against the platform provided Norman Bentwich on February 10, 1932 when he was invited to talk on “Jerusalem, the City of Peace” as his inaugural lecture as a newly appointed academic staff member. Bentwich, who had
just been kicked out of the Mandatory administration as the attorney-general due to Arab pressure against Jewish officials, following the weak legal response to the 1929 riots, was seen as another attempt by the University’s head, JL Magnes, to fortify the Brit Shalom element within the faculty. A stink bomb was released and some arrests were made. (see: Nonnan and Helen Bentwich, Mandate Memories, 1918-1948, p.150; Shindler, Colin. The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right, p. 156).

The negotiations Magnes conducted with the Mufti (see: Cohen, Naomi, The Year after the Riots: American Responses to the Palestinian Crisis of 1929-30) as well as the mission of A.E. Simon to Germany on Magnes behalf for adult education were a clear pattern of political machinations and a clear ideological inclination and the University was considered almost from its beginning as a bastion for the pacifist, Central European approach to a Jewish presence in Eretz-Yisrael (background: Chen Merchaviah, Sefer Betar, Vol. I; S. Hattis, The Bi-National Idea in Palestine in Mandatory Times).

2. Besides the Min Hayesod episode and the powerful support provided by Hebrew University staff for opposition forces to Ben-Gurion mentioned, I am again surprised that Dr. Yoram Hazony’s story of the Hebrew U. and the establishment of Israel (in his The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul) is not mentioned nor the academic problems faced by Yosef Klausner in his non-appointments, evidence of
duress I would maintain from the Left. as well as other lecturers. Not even a footnote (see: Heyd, Michael, L’Université hébraïque de Jérusalem à travers ses acteurs: La première génération de professeurs, 1925–1948). Is duress only a right-wing/nationalist instrument?

3. But my main problem is one of definitions.

A) Is “political duress” correctly but “a strong sense of a threat of external interference with core academic values”? (p. 541) Could not there exist an internal phenomenon?

B) Are calls for the dismissal of academics for their opinions truly predicated on a “deep loathing for the whole [the whole?] idea of free thinking? (p. 549)

C) Is there really “a general negative disposition to professors” by the leaders of right-wing parties? (p. 549) Or, are professors respected (Chug HaProfessorim; BZ Netanyahu; et al.) by the right while these same professors are derided by their left-wing colleagues and left-wing political leaders? Is it all black and white?

If a professor expresses sympathy for Arab terrorists, even suggesting targets for them so as to better promote their political agenda (and I am specifically referring to an op-ed published in Haaretz on May 11, 2001, which was perceived as justifying Arab terror calling on Arabs to murder Jews and encouraging them to place explosive charges but only on the eastern side of the Green Line which contained these words: "There is no doubt regarding the legitimacy of the armed resistance in the territories themselves. If the Palestinians had a bit of sense, they would concentrate their struggle against the settlements.[...] They would similarly refrain from placing explosive charges on the western side of the Green Line."), is that an academic value that need be protected?

The article is an opening for a debate and I am sure other points will be discussed.

Yisrael Medad

Collapse on Campus

A not-so-bright move.

In academia, hiring token Jews
By Asaf Romirowsky

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict long ago spilled over into America's education departments of Middle East studies. In an attempt to appear balanced in the face of charges of anti-Israel biases, some departments or programs of Middle East studies have added Israeli scholars to their ranks - a move that at first glance appears welcome.

Yet many of these Israeli academics have built their reputation on a scholarship that is harshly critical not only of Israeli policy, but of Israel's very existence. Anti-Israel scholars who hail from Israel are cited favorably by the entire range of Israel's critics. These range from pro-Palestinian groups like the Committee to Stop Demolition of Houses in Palestine, the Committee to Stop Torture and Breaking the Silence to Jewish anti-Zionist groups like the American Council for Judaism. They also include neo-Nazis and Islamists.

Read more...

What You Can Be Taught at the Hebrew University

Here's how one Jewess, Daphna Golan-Agnon, set out to undermine the Zionist-Jewish state of Israel, in her own words and thanks to Israel Academia Monitor:

"My PhD thesis focused on the reconstruction and use of history in South Africa...The first Intifada was at its peak when I completed my PhD and I became
actively involved in establishing B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, established in February 1989. I was its founding Research Director, in charge of establishing the data collection, research, and publication of the organization. I also researched and wrote some of the reports myself.

"I felt that my contribution to a human rights culture in Israel was more important than my research on South Africa...In 1989 I applied and was accepted for an international intensive program on Human Rights and International Law at the International School for Human Rights in Strasbourg...[later] I received a research grant from the Washington based International Human Rights Internship Program...I returned to Israel with the idea of creating an academic center like the Center for Applied Legal Studies. I envisioned and helped design a Center that would be an academic home for both human rights activists and scholars. This became the Hebrew University Center for Human Rights, later the Minerva Center for Human Rights.

"Shortly after the signing of the Oslo accord in December 1993, I became the Founding Director of the Israeli Center Bat Shalom which, with the Palestinian Jerusalem Center for Women in East Jerusalem, was entitled the Jerusalem Link - A Women's Joint Venture for Peace...On the invitation of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University and supported by a research grant from the Ford Foundation...I focused on Israeli human rights activists protecting Palestinian rights and the relationships of the activists with the legal system. I examined why Israeli human rights activists challenge Israeli policies using universal values and the language of human rights...In 1999-2001 I was appointed by the Minister of Education to design and coordinate a national plan to reduce gaps in the education system. The recommendations of the committee led to a reform in the distribution of
funding in all Israel's schools, the establishment of research groups to change curriculum in history and civil education for Arab schools, and the celebration of International Human Rights Day in all parts of the Israeli education system...

..."Since 1999, I have established and taught two Fellowship Programs at the Hebrew University: The Human Rights Fellows Program of The Minerva Center for Human Rights, at the Law School, and the Fellowship Program for Gender Equality and the Prevention of Violence against Women...I began to examine what the students learn from this experience of being able to contribute to advancing human rights, their use of the universal language of human rights, as well as their motivations and passion to
change...In June 2004, I and Salim Tamari, Director of the Institute of Jerusalem
Studies established an Israeli-Palestinian research group to study models of Reconciliation and Transitional Justice for Israel and Palestine. I hope that this group will now focus its efforts both on publication of a book as well as on the formation of a public process of acknowledgement and reconciliation."

Israeli academia at work.

Follow-up on Post-Academic Freedom

I recently published the academic composition competition on Hebron's illegality sponsored in part by Israeli academic institutions.

I sent it off to the Hebronites, the Jewish ones, that is, and sure enough, this was sent around a day later:-

To all friends and supporters of the Jewish Community of Hebron: The following document(see .pdf attached for original) calls for an international competition dealing with 'the occupation of Hebron," marking "the 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the 'palestinian territories.'"

Note that this competition is sponsored, in part, by the International Red Cross. Also, please note email addresses, phone numbers and faxes of the competition's steering committee at the conclusion of this email.

Perhaps you may wish enter the competition and write about the Arab occupation of Eretz Yisrael in general, and more specifically, Hebron. Perhaps you will write about Muslim prevention of Jews and Christians from entering Ma'arat HaMachpela (the Tomb of the Patriarchs) for 700 years. Perhaps you will write about the transformation of the Avraham Avinu synagogue into a sheep pen and public lavatory. Perhaps you will research the defilement and destruction of the ancient Jewish cemetery in Hebron. Perhaps you will write about the 1929 massacre, during which 67 Jews were slaughtered and dozens maimed and injured. (More topic information will be forthcoming.)

Dr. Orna Ben-Naftali, Head of the International Law Division, the Law School, the College of Management Academic Studies; Tel. (9723)963-4121 Email: obennaft@colman.ac.il
Toni Pfanner, Editor in chief, The International Review of the Red Cross
Tel: 41 22 730 29 11 Fax: 41227302830 Email: tpfanner@icrc.org
Adv. Limor Yehuda, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel. 02-6521218
Dr. Barak Medinah, Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Senior Lectureship in Law
Competition Coordinator: Mr. Avi Berg (hebronc@actcom.net.il)

Please make your voices heard.

Nice going.