Category Archives: Israel

Continuously Updated: Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians

Anti-Semitism, Israel, Middle East, Pseudo-history

The real rock stars of the Israeli intelligentsia—Israel’s own Ward Churchills —are the pretentiously self-styled “New Historians.” This is a group of popular far-left fabricators (one of whom facetiously boasted: “We perform at weddings and bar mitzvas”), who’ve cocked a snook at the liberal country in which they’ve thrived, so as to gain admittance into the fashionable Palestinian pantheon…
…the “New Historians'” most flamboyant and fishy associate [is] Benny Morris. In fact, it was Morris’ bowdlerization of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s words that first prompted Karsh to investigate the fraud perpetrated by these hip historians and expose it in his masterful book, “Fabricating Israeli History: The ‘New Historians.'”

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily column, “Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians.”

Updated continually: Harvard and the University of Chicago have distanced themselves from “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” study, issuing emphatic disclaimers to that effect. The “study” was fraught with logical and factual infelicities and fell foul of minimal scholarly requirements.

“Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians” dealt with a little-discussed aspect of the “study.”

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting writes that

“[E]ven a cursory examination of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy reveals that it is riddled with errors of fact, logic and omission, has inaccurate citations, displays extremely poor judgement regarding sources, and, contrary to basic scholarly standards, ignores previous serious work on the subject. The bottom line: virtually every word and argument is, or ought to be, in ‘serious dispute.'”

Read CAMERA’s detailed analysis of the study here.

Also of interests is “Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic” by Eliot A. Cohen, who writes the following about the paper:

Inept, even kooky academic work, then, but is it anti-Semitic? If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information–why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.

A doff of the hat to Walter Block for sending this along.

Melanie Phillips offers a characteristically superb analysis of a Kafkaesque strategy, whereby, “The enemies of antisemitism are the new McCarthyites’… —anyone who called attention to the outbreak of Judeophobia was a McCarthyite, because they were trying to sanitise the crimes of Israel…”

And from civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz: “Debunking the Newest—and the Oldest—Jewish Conspiracy: A Reply to the Mearsheimer-Walt “Working Paper’”

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has more on the straw produced by libertarians who are “pretty much indistinguishable from the far left and the far right” in the unenlightened heat they generate. Read “The Ugly Side of Libertarianism.”

Overstating Jewish Power By Christopher Hitchens

Danes and Deniers

Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Journalism, Judaism & Jews, Media

Holocaust denier David Irving, whom I’ve defended here, has become the cause celebre for the terminally self-righteous. Some in the West simply refuse to defend the Danes in a meaningful and morally unambiguous manner. So instead, they bang on about the admittedly shabby treatment of Irving. In their eyes, the Danes and their controversial drawings cannot be disentangled from the Irving issue.

At the risk of repeating myself, the need to repeal laws prohibiting hate speech and Holocaust denial cannot be overemphasized; nobody wants to see Irving jailed for being a jerk.

So what of those who say hounding this Holocaust denier makes the West “guilty of the crimes with which we charge the Muslims”? Well, the idea that aggression exists on a continuum is asinine—pure left-liberalism. According to this slippery-slope illogic, the European laws banning Holocaust denial—and they are indefensible—are as distasteful as beheading—or scheming to behead—”heretics.”

Now that’s a howler!

Buchanan of Arabia

Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The following is an excerpt from my new column, Buchanan of Arabia. I’m sure readers will have plenty to say in response.

After conflating the Danes with the most off-putting exemplars of free expression—Larry Flynt the pornographer, the Nazis of Skokie, and the late Robert Mapplethorpe of the bullwhip-bedecked behind—Buchanan allows that we are all entitled to be contemptuous of “the beliefs and values the Islamic faith holds dear, and for the prophet.” “But if we wish to exercise our right to air [these views] in print or broadcast, we should expect to reap what we have sown.”
With these obligatory lines, Mr. Buchanan discharges his duty to the West and its puny freedoms. What follows is an ode to Islam. Buchanan’s paean to this faith’s brute force is crucial in divining why he demands the West’s capitulation, following the cartoon Jihad.

Christian Butterbach quotes my description of Israel in the column as:

…the Middle East’s only true democracy—a small spot of sanity in a sea of savagery, where enlightened Western law prevails, and where Christians, Jews and their holy places are safe.

He then adds the following important quip:

Are Muslim holy places in Israel not safe???

My response:

Muslims are always safe in liberal countries. You know that; look around. It’s inherent in the definition of “liberal.” Countries with a liberal tradition make it safe for all people to worship openly. Arabs living in Israel proper are as safe as you and I are in our neighborhoods and places of worship. And very active on Israeli campuses—alongside their fellow Jewish, radical-leftists—in anti-Zionist causes. No different to an American campus, really. It would have been a redundancy on my part to add “Muslims,” when it is Jews and Christians who are imperiled in Muslims countries.

In fact, some of the angry letter writers (I don’t mean Chris) should visit Israel (and I don’t mean rush to the PA and hire a “guide” to show them a staged stone throwing). Visit the suicidally liberal schools and homes of real Israelis. I actually grew up in Israel, and went to school with Israeli-Muslims. Yeah, visit Israel, won’t you, instead of writing propaganda, the only verification for which is Mr. Buchanan and other dedicated saboteurs.

Surprised By Hamas’ Victory?

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Media, The Zeitgeist

A consensus has emerged according to which no one predicted that the “Palestinian People” would elect Hamas as their representatives—democratically.
It shows you what little attention I pay to the talking titmice out there, because I thought that when I called the elections, I was merely stating the obvious. I believed that a consensus existed according to which there would be no other outcome.
I foresaw both the victory in the municipal elections of 2005 and in the general elections of 2006. On January the 7th this year, I called Hamas “the Palestinians’ unofficial representative,â€? and spoke of a shoo-in for the terrorist organization. Apparently the precious few who read the forecast viewed it as comic relief. What are you going to do!
Isaiah Berlin said that an ideologue is someone who is prepared to suppress what he suspects to be true. Those who fetishize the Palestinians are ideologues who’ll put a spin on reality so that it’ll comport with their ideology.
To foresee the results of the recent elections in the Palestinian Authority, all that was required was a commitment to “unvarnished objective reality.” But no one wants to take an honest, hard look at the cruel complexion of Palestinian society—unless, of course, it is to blame the liberal, orderly commonwealth adjacent to it: Israel.