One of his points, however, seem to place the professor in the same company as anti-semites:
Israeli hawks represent their war of aggression as in ‘self-defense.’ But the UK Israeli chief rabbi admitted on camera that that the Gaza attack actually ‘had something to do with Iran.’First of all, let's get the pesky facts out of the way. The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, thought he was off the air on BBC Radio - not televised - when the presenter asked him about his opinion of the fighting in Gaza, and he answered "‘I think it’s got to do with Iran, actually" before he was told he was still on live.
Sacks is not Israeli. He was born in London. He is not a member of the Israeli government, and as far as I know he doesn't advise them nor is he privy to their own discussions.
But let us put aside Cole's lack of basic knowledge, and see what he is really trying to say.
Juan Cole apparently believes that a Chief Rabbi must be a member of the Elders of Zion, and his offhand statement - almost certainly regarding the arming of Hamas and Islamic Jihad with medium-range Iranian rockets - was not merely conjecture from thousands of miles away from Israel, but an admission of how the other Elders of the Jewish people are really thinking in our super-secret discussions.
Cole cannot distinguish between Israeli politicians - and a British Jewish religious figure.
What kind of twisted, bigoted thinking would cause someone to make such an assumption that all worldwide Jewry is speaking with the same ("hawkish") voice?
The rest of Cole's essay also betrays a bizarre, paranoid, conspiracy-theorist way of thinking. For example, he says "the military action against the people of Gaza is a diversion tactic; the real goal is Greater Israel, an assertion of Israeli sovereignty over all the territory once held by the British Mandate of Palestine." Really? Israel started a mini-war to divert the world's attention from settlements? I would have thought that Syria was doing a better job at that.
I guess those scheming Jews were bombing Gaza just to divert attention from the West Bank, and they also have secret meetings with chief rabbis who stupidly reveal their plans, which have something to do with Iran and not the settlements.
I know it is all very confusing. You need a third-rate academic like Juan Cole, who believes in conspiracy theories where Jews control everything, to explain it all.