I had missed this, but Columbia University professor Joseph Massad had written what was pretty much a love letter to Hamas massacres at Electronic Intifada some 36 hours after the 10/7 massacre:
What can motorized paragliders do in the face of one of the most formidable militaries in the world?
Apparently much in the hands of an innovative Palestinian resistance, which early on Saturday morning launched a surprise attack on Israel by air, land and sea. Indeed as stunning videos show, these paragliders have become the air force of the Palestinian resistance.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the major offensive led by Hamas on 7 October, was not expected by anyone.
It came in retaliation for the ongoing Israeli pogroms in the West Bank town of Huwwara and Jerusalem, especially by settlers storming al-Aqsa mosque during the Jewish High Holy Days over the last month, not to mention the ongoing siege against Gaza itself for more than a decade and a half.
No less astonishing was the Palestinian resistance’s takeover of several Israeli settler-colonies near the Gaza boundary and even as far away as 22 kms, as in the case of Ofakim.
Reports promptly emerged that thousands of Israelis were fleeing through the desert on foot to escape the rockets and gunfire, with many still hiding inside settlements more than 24 hours into the resistance offensive.
In the interest of safeguarding their lives and their children’s future, the colonists’ flight from these settlements may prove to be a permanent exodus. They may have finally realized that living on land stolen from another people will never make them safe.
Notice that Massad considers all Israelis to be "settler-occupiers." He also says that massacring women and children is "especially" justified as a response to Jews quietly visiting the Temple Mount.
Later on in his article he castigates Arab nations for asking Hamas to stop the massacres. Because the more dead Jews, the better!
This antisemitic asshole teaches at a prestigious university.
There is a petition for Columbia to fire a professor who waxes poetic at the slaughter of innocents.
Sign it. Columbia won't do anything to a tenured professor but they will hopefully at least think twice before hiring another Hamas groupie.
(h/t EBoZ)
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Columbia professor Joseph Massad is very upset that Jews are claiming the right to self-determination. If Jews indeed have the right to self-determination, then opposing that really is a form of antisemitism, and antisemites like Massad cannot admit to that.
His normal method is to claim that Jews aren't a people, and that most Jews do not originate in the Middle East. If they aren't a people, then they have no right to self-determination.
But Massad knows that everyone knows that is a lie besides dyed in the wool antisemites who call Jews "Khazars."
So he has come up with a new argument: that the self-determination argument was never a Zionist tenet, rather it was a Palestinian Arab one.
Since the inception of their war against the Palestinian people, Zionist ideologues did not argue for Jewish self-determination but rather sought to delegitimise the indigenous Palestinians’ right to it. In the tradition of all colonial powers which denied that the colonised were a nation, the Zionists began by denying the nationness of the Palestinians.
Actually, the Zionists didn't even address the "nationness" of the Palestinian Arabs, who themselves didn't assert such a status (except for a tiny number of intellectuals) until decades after Zionism was established.
At the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I, the Zionist Organisation (ZO) did not invoke any "Jewish" right to self-determination, even though self-determination was all the rage at the conference, with colonised peoples from around the world affirming this right to liberate themselves from the colonial yoke.
The ZO instead argued that Palestine "is the historic home of the Jews…and through the ages they have never ceased to cherish the longing and the hope of a return".
Massad takes this statement out of context. The ZO's proposals were not meant to be a definition of Zionism, rather recommendations to the allies with an eye to what was politically possible. Even so, they did use the language of rights in their suggested conference statement: "The High Contracting Parties recognize the historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine and the right of Jews to reconstitute in Palestine their National Home. "
Massad then makes an astoundingly incorrect assertion:
It is most important to note in this regard that, unlike the more recent and increased use by Zionists of the notion of Jewish self-determination, neither Herzl’s writings, the 1897 first Zionist Congress, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, nor the 1922 Palestine Mandate employed the language of "rights", let alone the right of self-determination.
Herzl's definition was "Zionism has for its object the creation of a home, secured by public rights, for those Jews who either cannot or will not be assimilated in the country of their adoption."
The phrase "public rights" was coined by Italian jurist Pellegrino Rossi in the 1830s. It meant universal rights for people - what it now called human rights. Herzl's definition of Zionism was based on the idea that Jews have the same rights as any other people, which would by implication include self-determination, a phrase that didn't gain popularity until the 1910s.
Massad cherry picks specific documents and statements and says that because they don't invoke "rights' or "self-determination,"then Zionists as a whole didn't use that language until recently. That is laughable.
A book on Zionism and the Jewish question by famed juror Louis Brandeis in 1915 says, "Jews collectively should enjoy the same right and opportunity to live and develop as do other groups of people."
Similarly, Jessie Ethel Sampter published "A Course in Zionism "in 1915, and wrote, "The Jew is always foremost in every modem movement towards justice. In the 18th century he fought for individual human rights, as his rights. In the 20th century he fights for the rights of the small nations to life and autonomy, also as his right. It is the democracy of nations, internationalism. "
Massad is even wrong in his assertion that self-determination is a new claim by Zionists. "A Jewish State in Palestine" by David Werner Amram (1918) says that the Zionist movement was partially a result of the "consciousness of the right of self-expression and self-determination of the Jewish people." The phrase did not have to be said explicitly by the early Zionists; it was well understood as one of many national rights that Jews should have as a people.
Similarly, the preface to a book written by the Zionist Organization in London in 1918 says, "Only by their resettlement in their ancestral land of Palestine...will the Jews be able to exercise the right of self-determination."
Early Zionists always asserted their national rights as the Jewish nation as well as the right of self-determination. It is not a new phenomenon. Massad's pretense that this is a new definition of Zionism is yet another failed attempt to delegitimize Zionism - and to push his brand of modern antisemitism.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
For the old religious and evangelical left, Israel often represents Western Civilization, colonialism, and imperialism. For aging denizens of Liberation Theology, the Palestinian cause offers the narrative of a Third World people oppressed by First World wealth, technology, and cultural superiority. Israel is an ally of the United States, and from the religious left’s perspective, is an unwelcome extension of American (and British) power into the Mideast. The Palestinians, from that view, are victims of the American imperium, meriting special advocacy by concerned justice-minded American Christians.
The religious left’s animus towards Israel leads to often absurd contradictions and double standards.
Evangelical leftists relate to this narrative, often informed by their own neo-Anabaptist perspective, which is pacifist and anti-empire. Israel of course has by necessity a significant military force, much of it made possible through American aid. This rankles neo-Anabaptists who think anti-violence is the gospel’s chief theme. There is another sometimes-underlying concern for neo-Anabaptists. They are discomfited by ancient biblical Israel, with its divinely ordained kings, warrior heroes, armies, and military victories, all of which defy the neo-Anabaptist stress on God as supremely peaceful. If only unconsciously, they are inclined towards a form of Marcionism, the early church heresy that minimized the canonical authority of the Old Testament. This discomfort with the Hebrew scriptures facilitates unease with modern Israel.
The religious left’s animus towards Israel leads to often absurd contradictions and double standards, especially for a denomination like the PCUSA. It and the other mainline Protestant bodies have countless statements condemning Israel for ostensibly oppressing the Palestinians among other depredations. But they are largely silent about human rights abuses so prevalent among Israel’s Arab neighbors, including the Palestinian Authority, not to mention countless repressive regimes around the world. They ignored Hamas’s July rocket attacks on Israel. A 2011 PCUSA report affirmed calls for democracy during the Arab Spring, but such calls are rare, and it naturally focused on criticizing U.S. Mideast policy.
The PCUSA General Assembly in July did condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it devoted more verbiage to the United States and NATO having “flooded Ukraine with lethal weapons,” enriching “war profiteers—at the expense of the taxpayers, the poor and the planet,” guided by “powerful geopolitical and financial interests.” It also derided sanctions against Russia and lamented the cost to “planetary survival and social justice.”
The Religious Left descends from the Social Gospel, later radicalized by Liberation Theology. It disdains capitalism, bourgeois democracy, America, Western Civilization, and human rights regarding speech, religion, and property. But its hostility to Israel is especially pernicious, not just for its double standards, but also for its underlying disregard for a people who have been among the world’s most tormented.
Modern Israel arose from the ashes of the Holocaust. From the beginning, Israel has had to fight for its very existence. Christians should understand that opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is opposition to Israel as a nation.
Antisemitism is different from most other forms of racism. In order to combat it, we need to understand what is a conspiracy theory.
It's customary to hear well-meaning people intone something along these lines: "Antisemitism and anti-black racism are part of the same fight.” In a basic sense, this is true: they are both odious forms of hatred that endanger people and corrode society. Diminishing them as much as possible is part of the same overarching defense of our civic health.
But it’s a platitude that papers over essential differences between two opposite forms of racism. Few human phenomena can be described with an algorithm. There are always ambiguities and exceptions. Nevertheless, it’s heuristically valid to arrange racism into two categories: a caste-oriented, “down-punching” form and a conspiracist, “up-punching” form.
By and large, anti-black racism constructs an underclass that the racist regards as inferior, to be segregated, plundered, and exploited. In the main, Antisemitism views the Jews as a preternaturally powerful, evil elite that plunders and exploits the Antisemite—and the broader society he seeks to awaken to the struggle. In the ugliest of ironies, however much he rails about Jewish degeneracy, the Antisemite invests the Jews with traits and abilities that make them seem diabolically superior.
Yet the ADL has shown a dangerous propensity for Internet censorship—an authoritarian impulse that it usually veils behind a desire to quell the rising tide of antisemitism. Its consultations with the PayPal online payment system, for instance, were geared toward demonetizing anyone, not just far-right extremists, whose opinions were out of favor with the left.
The attempt to sink Twitter by persuading advertisers and users to exit it goes beyond those efforts to harness Big Tech clout to enforce woke orthodoxy on the Web.
What the ADL is now demanding is to set a standard by which no social-media platform or Internet service can survive if it enables conservatives to participate on an equal footing with liberals.
Censored or uncensored, Twitter—or any similar company—will always be something of a sewer, as it prizes angry discourse and discourages thoughtful exchanges. But if the ADL and others succeed, a precedent will be set to ensure that no platform encouraging debate from both ends of the spectrum can survive.
The consequence of the above—such as the Biden administration’s use of social- media companies to squelch COVID-19 debate—will be an even more divided country and greater civil strife.
Just as important, it will create an atmosphere in which free speech is not merely under assault, as it is on college campuses and other places that have been completely captured by the left. It will mean we are moving closer to a society where the norm will be to silence dissent on all important topics.
It is already a disgrace that the ADL treats partisan advocacy as more important than its core mission of fighting antisemitism. But its effort to sink Twitter makes clear that its real goal is to shut up those who don’t toe its political line.
Think what you like about Trump or Musk. But this latest stand shows that there is no greater foe of democracy than the ADL under Greenblatt.
Editor’s note: Excerpted from the new three-volume set “Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings” edited by Gil Troy, the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People, now available at www.theljp.org. This is the 11th in a series.
In 1897, Theodor Herzl essentially described himself when he wrote about a man who once “deep in his soul felt the need to be a Jew,” and who, reeling from Jew-hatred, watched “his soul become one bleeding wound.” Finally, this man “began to love Judaism with great fervor.”
In this short story, “The Menorah,” Herzl saluted his step-by-step Judaization and Zionization. Celebrating Hanukkah, he delighted in the “growing brilliance” candle by candle, gradually generating more and more light.
The “occasion became a parable for the enkindling of a whole nation.” Flipping from the reluctant, traumatized Jew he had been to the proud, engaged Jew he was surprised to see in the mirror, Herzl admitted: “When he had resolved to return to the ancient fold and openly acknowledge his return, he had only intended to do what he considered honorable and sensible. But he had never dreamed that on his way back home he would also find gratification for his longing for beauty. Yet what befell him was nothing less.”
Herzl concluded: “The darkness must retreat.”
Seven years later, Herzl spelled out Zionism’s dynamic power, its spillover effects. “For inherent in Zionism, as I understand it, is not only the striving for a legally secured homeland for our unfortunate people, but also the striving for moral and intellectual perfection,” he wrote.
This vision made Herzl a model liberal nationalist. He believed that “an individual can help himself neither politically nor economically as effectively as a community can help itself.”
The 20th anniversary of the passing of Israel’s legendary foreign minister Abba Eban on November 17 is an opportunity to ask whether the acclaimed diplomat, with his stellar global reputation, was as effective in defining Israeli policy as he was in advocating it abroad.
An outstanding student at England’s Cambridge University, Eban graduated in 1938 with an exemplary triple first, positioning him to pursue a lifetime career as a respected academic.
But the South Africa-born Eban could not sit out the impending world crisis that would so heavily impact the Jewish people. Drawn to Zionism, he worked at the London headquarters of the World Zionist Movement under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann (who later became Israel’s first president).
With the outbreak of World War II, Eban joined the British military to fight the Nazis, serving as an intelligence officer in Mandatory Palestine. Discharged at the end of the war, Eban joined the staff of the Jewish Agency’s political department and was sent to New York where he became the Jewish Agency’s liaison with the UN’s Special Committee on Palestine, helping steer it toward recommending Jewish statehood. Subsequently, Eban was part of the lobbying effort that produced the necessary two-thirds majority General Assembly vote for partition on November 29, 1947.
After successfully orchestrating Israel’s acceptance to the UN in May 1949, Eban became the Jewish state’s permanent representative to the organization. In parallel, he also served as Israel’s ambassador to the US, concurrently working in both Washington and New York throughout the 1950s.
Eban was a celebrity. His remarkable intellectual and oratorial prowess made him one of the foremost English speechmakers of the period, on a par with Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy. Henry Kissinger wrote: “I have never encountered anyone who matched his command of the English language. Sentences poured forth in mellifluous constructions complicated enough to test the listener’s intelligence and simultaneously leave him transfixed by the speaker’s virtuosity.”
Homeric he is not; but a hero for our time he is. Ulysses is first and foremost a comedy of exile. Joyce wrote it while living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris. That Dublin went on calling to him throughout the years he lived elsewhere is clear from the novel’s intense recreation of the city’s bursting vitality. But novelists thrive on being away, and Joyce needed to be anywhere but Dublin, free from Irish politics, the church, and his own memories of personal and professional failure. Leopold Bloom is not given that choice; Joyce does not buy him a ticket from Dublin to Tiberias. But he is already, in his Jewishness, exile enough for Joyce. Behind the epic figure of Odysseus, in this novel, looms the shadow of the mythical Wandering Jew who, for having jeered at Jesus on the way to the cross, is doomed to roam the earth until the end of human time. Call him a figment of early Christian antisemitism. And while antisemitism isn’t a major theme in Ulysses, it shows itself with some unexpected savagery from time to time as in the figure of the headmaster Mr. Deasy who gets a kick out of declaring “Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the Jews … and do you know why? She never let them in. That’s why.” “That’s not life for men and women,” Bloom responds, “insult and hatred.” Those who are not let in, must find somewhere else to go.
This has been in large part the Jewish story for 2,000 years. And the homeless Jew is the metaphorical undercurrent of Ulysses. Joyce is said to have worked up the the character of Leopold Bloom from the Jews he met in the course of his own wanderings in Trieste and Zurich. He must have studied them attentively, for Bloom is no mere token Jew. In his queer lapses from Judaism, mistaking words and confusing events, he is every inch the part-time, no longer practicing Jew, making the best of the diaspora, more Jewish to others than to himself.
And in him, unexpectedly but triumphantly, Joyce sees a version of his own rejections and rebuffs. Without going into what we know or think we know of Joyce’s own sexual predilections, it is accepted that there are similarities between Bloom’s submissiveness and his creator’s, and that Joyce chose Bloom’s Jewishness as the perfect vehicle to express the passive, much put-upon and all-suffering openness to life that he needed to drive—or, rather, be driven by—this novel. At home in being far from home, content to be cuckolded and remaining in love with the wife who cuckolds him, pessimistic and yet happy enough, dialectical, pedantic—in one lunatic scene he morphs into “The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft who tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved tradition of medical science … produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centre”—Bloom makes being a stranger in a strange land an enticing condition.
One of the best jokes made about Bloom is that he was once a traveler for blotting paper. His absorbency might not make him the most forceful husband for Molly, but it is the key to the novel’s plenty. With Bloom around to soak in every misadventure without complaint, there’s no limit to what Joyce might plausibly invent. Ulysses first appeared in 1922. Worse things than exile were still to happen to Jews. And for many novelists in the ensuing years, the Jew would become the perfect protagonist, the very model of humanity in extremis—homeless, tragic, patient, funny. But James Joyce got there first.
The Dreyfus affair was not the only social battle in which the Revue engaged. In 1897, across two issues, it published a remarkable “Enquete sur la Commune,” a series of brief, firsthand accounts of the great uprising of 1871 whose specter still haunted France. A century and a half later it remains one of the best accounts of that event.
The repressive legislation passed in response to the anarchist bombing wave of the early 1890s, laws which effectively banned anarchist propaganda and activity of any kind, was harshly criticized in the pages of La Revue blanche. The strongest criticism was an article signed “Un Juriste.” The author described the legislation as, “Everyone admits that these laws never should have been our laws, the laws of a republican nation, of a civilized nation, of an honest nation. They stink of tyranny, barbarism, and falsehood.” The pseudonymous author was the future three-time prime minister of France, Léon Blum.
An 1898 volume of anti-militarist articles released by the review’s book publishing arm, provocatively titled L’Armée contre la Nation (the army against the nation) would lead the minister of war to press a charge of defamation against the publishers, a charge the Natansons were able to successfully defend themselves against by claiming the book contained nothing but articles that had already been published elsewhere and not been found criminal.
By the turn of the century French intellectuals began withdrawing from the political field. Charles Péguy later described the letdown felt during and after the Dreyfus affair by lamenting that “everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.” At the same time, the editorial staff and stable of writers at the review had turned over several times. One of its later editors, Urbain Gohier, was a barely disguised antisemite who would become an important figure on the anti-Jewish fringe. Yet the quality of the contributors was still high. If Mallarmé’s poetry no longer appeared in its pages, the young Guillaume Apollinaire did. Alfred Jarry became a regular contributor, the Revue publishing his masterpiece, Ubu Roi, as well as Octave Mirbeau’s classic Diary of a Chambermaid, serially and in book form by its Editions de la Revue blanche. That enterprise also published what is considered to be France’s first bestseller, a translation of—of all things—the Pole Henryk Sinkiewicz biblical epic Quo Vadis.
By the first years of the 20th century only one Natanson brother, Thadée, remained on the magazine. Embroiled in a lengthy divorce, he seemed to have grown tired of the magazine. It was losing money, but then, according to Thadée’s wife, later famous as Misia Sert, that had always been the case. In 1903 La Revue blanche published the last of its 237 issues. Its closing was in no way an indication of failure. It had set out to be the voice of a new France, of a more open country, both politically and culturally, and was, in the end, both its begetter and its voice.
We've discussed Columbia University professor Joseph Massad before and noted his antisemitism and bigotry since this blog began in 2004.
In an article for Arabi21, Massad strongly indicates that he subscribes to the discredited Khazar theory. While it is not the main point of his article, he writes, "The Zionists of European Jews claimed that they are the descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews and that their settlement project is nothing more than a 'return' to their ancient country, Israel....The pan-Jewish nationalism of European Zionism, which sought to re-establish the glories of the 'Jewish' kingdoms of the Palestinian Hebrews (who were appropriated by the Zionists as ancestors of Europeans who had converted to Judaism), was portrayed as 'progressive' and socialist."
This is similar to what he wrote in English for Electronic Intifada in 2017, saying that European Jews were converts to Judaism.
The Wikipedia entry on the genetics of Ashkenazic Jews shows that nearly all studies find their origin is in the Middle East. So Massad, in the 2017 article, makes his argument that most European Jews as converts by calling it "an established historical fact."
The usual version of the theory that Jews are converts is the Khazar theory, which has also been repeatedly debunked from genetic, historical, linguistic and other perspectives. It is embraced by Palestinians because their entire claim of indigeneity is destroyed when another people were there first and most Palestinian Arab families proudly trace their ancestry to Arabia. (The Palestinian Christians, on the other hand, seem to be descended from Jews.)
Since the truth is not on their side, they need to push the Khazar lie. And that lie is meant to say that Jews don't have any historic ties to the Jewish homeland.
Denying Jewish history is just as antisemitic as denying the Holocaust.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
StopAntisemitism received these photos of material that Joseph Massad is teaching in his Columbia University "Palestinian/Israeli Conflict" course. It came from a student taking the course.
The quote here is undeniably antisemitic, saying that Jews collaborated in the Holocaust. Zionists were trying to save Jewish lives, Nazis were trying to destroy Jewish lives. If this isn't antisemitic, nothing is.
And this is in a curriculum of a Columbia University professor.
Anyone who has ever perused a John Birch Society pamphlet about the Communist Conspiracy will experience a similar sensation on reading this little book about Israel and Zionism. An impressive mass of data and facts has been assembled; historical perspectives have been traced; all the right quotations have been adduced; a good deal of the argument even manages to make sense; yet the outcome corresponds to a reality that exists solely in the mind of the author.
The point of the book is that Israel acted in a racist way towards its Mizrahi citizens. This is true - but this was also 54 years ago. The author of the book says that Israel should become more Oriental and integrate more fully into the Middle Eastern culture in order to have a chance to make peace with Arabs, and what has happened since then is that the Arab nations have (slowly) become more Westernized - and many of them have made peace with Israel.
The irony is that every time Israel adopts Middle East culture, whether it is cuisine or dance or dress or music, people like Joseph Massad freak out and say that Israel is stealing it.
Massad has a history of antisemitic rhetoric. The late Petra Maquardt-Bigman once made a quiz to see if anyone can distinguish between phrases written by Massad and the far right antisemites at Stormfront. He pushes the discredited Khazar theory. Oh, and he's a homophobe.
The question isn't whether Massad is an antisemite who is teaching antisemitism to his students. The question is why Columbia allows a professor to spew hate disguised as pseudo-academia.
In 1958, a hugely popular novel named The Ugly American was published. It described how American foreign diplomats were tone deaf to the countries they were stationed in, with little interest in learning the local culture, and therefore they were regarded as obnoxious, pretentious blowhards.
Writing in Middle East Eye, the Columbia professor complains that Arab regimes have always put their own interests above that of Palestinians:
In contrast with the Arab peoples who have ceaselessly shown solidarity with the Palestinians since Britain issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, Arab regimes, as I have written in Middle East Eye before, have always put their own national interests first and had established ties and collaborated with Israel since 1948 - in the case of the Hashemite Amir Faisal since 1919.
...King Farouk of Egypt entered the war in 1948 not because he placed Palestinian interests ahead of Egypt’s, but as analysts have shown, on account of his rivalry with the Iraqi monarchy for hegemony over the post-colonial Arab world.
Not only did Nasser not launch a single war against Israel, but also all of Egypt’s subsequent wars were fought to defend Egypt, not the Palestinians. In 1956 and in 1967, Israel invaded Egypt and occupied Sinai.
...Rather than sacrifice their national interests to defend the Palestinians, the Arab regimes have used every opportunity to sell out Palestinian rights to advance their own interests without respite.
Massad's cluelessness equals that of the American diplomats of 1950s Southeast Asia ridiculed in The Ugly American.
Of course every responsible national leader is going to place their own national interests above those of anybody else. That is their primary responsibility!
But Palestinians like Massad have drunk the Kool-Aid of the Arab rhetoric where they have claimed for the past 72 years that they put the Palestinian issue above their own. As he notes, they never have - but Palestinians like Massad act as if they should.
This has resulted in a Palestinian leadership and populace that have been taught that they can rely on others to do the hard work to get them what they want, while they just sit back and wait in relative comfort compared to much of the Arab world. Arab leaders should fight wars for Palestinians, they should exert diplomatic pressure for Palestinians, they should boycott Israel for Palestinians, they should forego the benefits of peace with Israel for Palestinians.
Arabs never cared about Palestinians. They always used them as pawns to help destroy Israel. The cynicism was obvious to all, with Syrian and Lebanese leaders pretending that keeping Palestinians stateless was for their own good, to help pressure Israel for a "return" that will never happen.
Astute Palestinians would have noticed this. They would have realized decades ago that if they want a state, they would have to actually work for it, sweat for it, negotiate for it, compromise with Israel for it - not wait for their Arab brethren to do the work for them.
But Palestinian leaders and apologists like Massad just don't get it. They think that the ICC and the ICJ and the UN and the EU will save them just like they used to think that Arab leaders will go to war for them. Instead of building the institutions of statehood, they outsourced all the hard work to Europeans and NGOs. A glance at Palestinian government websites shows that many of them are empty shells, not updated in years, because they never sowed interest in governing themselves or building a government infrastructure.
The only time the world has seen Palestinians being proactive is with terror attacks.
Arab nations finally got fed up with the Hamas/Fatah split, and doubly so when the PA rejected peace plans in the 2000s and a peace framework from John Kerry during the Obama administration - the one president who was the most friendly to Palestinians and antipathetic to Israel. They threw even that away.
Meanwhile, Israel got stronger - not just militarily but economically. Boycotting a regional superpower made less and less sense for Arabs. Jordan and Egypt needed Israel's natural gas. The UAE and Bahrain want Israel's high tech expertise. The policy of following Palestinian demands of boycotting Israel has been increasingly self-defeating.
Massad is complaining that the Arabs are not prioritizing Palestinian interests above their own. Only someone who is spoiled and out of touch would even dare make such a demand. Worse, Massad is denigrating the huge amounts of monetary and diplomatic aid that Arab nations have given Palestinians over the past 50+ years.
Even Columbia professors can have the emotional intelligence of a child, thinking that the world revolves around them.
Massad is using the old playbook, trying to shame the Arab world into giving Palestinians unlimited, no-strings attached support. He has no idea that the world has changed.
Massad's diatribe will not impress any Arab leader. On the contrary, they will be pushed even further away from sympathizing with Palestinians.
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In May, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and IRmep will be holding an all-star Israel-bashing seminar at the National Press Club in Washington.
Speakers include Haaretz' Gideon Levy, Columbia University's Joseph Massad, "The Israel Lobby"'s Stephen Walt, and washed up 1970s rock star Roger Waters.
Only the official videographer and accredited members of the news media will be allowed to record this event. Attendees are allowed to take still photos without using a flash. ... No public dissemination of third-party information in conjunction with or during the event is permitted without the express prior written permission of the organizers 30 days in advance of the conference. Individuals or organizations that violate or have in the past violated these conference or National Press Club rules or who disrupt orderly proceedings may have their conference credentials and/or tickets revoked and may not be permitted to participate in future events.
The first rule seems to be designed to ensure that if anyone says anything embarrassing - crossing the mythical line from "anti-Israel" to antisemitism, for example - there will be no evidence. The organizers must approve any news media in attendance, so you can be sure that "Zionist" media will not attend.
It took me a while to figure out what the second highlighted rule even means. I'm fairly sure it allows the organizers to kick out anyone they want if they send a single tweet during the conference.
The anti-Israel crowd is deathly afraid that one of their speakers will say something that will make them look bad and they want to control the news. In addition, these rules are meant to discourage any Zionists from attending the event.
These rules are what one would expect to see in a third world country, not the National Press Club.
The only other place I could find the same wording of "No public dissemination of third-party information..." was from a similar anti-Israel and antisemitic conference from 2014, the "National Summit to Reassess the U.S.—Israel 'Special Relationship,'" also sponsored by IRmep.
Pro-Israel conferences like AIPAC live-stream the entire show. They have nothing to hide.
Clearly WRMEA and IRmep do have something to hide from the public.
(h/t Paul R)
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Joseph Massad is professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University.
Even though he has written articles that are so antisemitic as to be indistinguishable from neo-Nazi literature, and even though he is a homophobe who accuses gay activists of colonialism and imperialism, he still gets respect. Which makes one wonder if it is possible for an Arab academic to ever say anything to outrageous for the Left to cheer him.
He just wrote an article for Middle East Eye where he uses his normal antisemitic rhetoric, claiming that Israel's Law of Return is illegal and that Palestinian "right of return" is international law.
The irony is not one that Israel does not recognise the right of refugees to return to their homeland; rather, Israel recognises only the right of Jews - whom it claims, based on its religious and colonial myths, were refugees from Palestine who had lived in exile for 2,000 years - to “return”, while it denies that right to Palestinians, whom it recognises as having been displaced from Palestine.
Of course, no one claims that Jews returning to Israel is based on international law. It is based on Israel's right to create its own immigration policy, as every other country has.
As usual, Massad's "proofs" for Palestinian "right of return" are a mixture of groundless assertion and links to documents that say no such thing. He cites the case of Bosnia, when that return was part of the Dayton Agreement and not based on international law. He cites without a shred of proof that descendants of refugees are considered eligible for return (he links to Somalian law saying some descendants of Somali refugees are eligible for citizenship - this has zero to do with international law.)
After all the smoke and mirrors, though, Massad gets to the real reason he wants to fool readers into believing that millions of Palestinians have the "right to return" to a country most have never seen:
The Palestinian struggle today, therefore, must not waiver on the implementation of the Palestinian right of return, as this right is the legal key to undoing the Zionist conquest of Palestine in its entirety.
Massad freely admits that his desire for "return" is not for human rights, or to help Palestinians escape statelessness, or any real legal reason. He sees it as a pseudo-legal way to destroy Israel.
Which is exactly the reasons given by Arab leaders for decades for not allowing Palestinians to become citizens in their countries - because it is better that they remain stateless and miserable but potential cannon fodder to one day, maybe, destroy Israel. The more miserable they are, the better.
Massad is not interested in justice or mercy. He just wants to see the Jewish state destroyed, and keeping Palestinians in misery is the way he wants to see it done.
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Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University has written an article for Electronic Intifada where he again tries to make an argument that Zionism is in fact antisemitic, and anti-Zionism is a principled form of anti-colonialism.
We've demolished his arguments and proven that he lies before. Massad's words about Zionism are indistinguishable from those of neo-Nazis. It is most interesting that the leftists seem to embrace Massad because he also lumps another group as anti-colonialist - the gays.
The beginning of the article, however, includes an historical aside that shows again how deceptive this Columbia professor is with the facts.
To establish his bona fides about being against antisemitism, he writes:
No thinking person, for example, is expected to believe that descriptions of Jews as engaging in a “worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization,” as Winston Churchill accused “international Jews” of doing in the Sunday Herald in 1920, are not anti-Semitic.
Was Churchill an antisemite?
Here is the article that Massad is referring to, entitled "Zionism vs. Bolshevism."
The very beginning of the article shows that there is no way that Churchill can be characterized as a hater of Jews.
SOME people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world. Disraeli, the Jew Prime Minister of England, and Leader of the Conservative Party, who was always true to his race and proud of his origin, said on a well-known occasion: “The Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.” Certainly when we look at the miserable state of Russia, where of all countries in the world the Jews were the most cruelly treated, and contrast it with the fortunes of our own country, which seems to have been so providentially preserved amid the awful perils of these times, we must admit that nothing that has since happened in the history of the world has falsified the truth of Disraeli’s confident assertion.
While Churchill's words from nearly a century ago do not conform to political correctness nowadays, he is careful to distinguish between the "international Jews" who supported what was proven to become a genocidal political movement and the majority of Jews.
Good and Bad Jews. The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such an intensity as in the Jewish race. The dual nature of mankind is nowhere more strongly or more terribly exemplified. We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilisation.
And it may well be that this same astounding race may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which, if not arrested, would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people; and that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.
Here is the full context for Massad's quote, that proves that he took a single sentence out of context in order to paint Churchill, and all Zionists, as antisemites:
"National" Jews.
There can be no greater mistake than to attribute to each individual a recognisable share in the qualities which make up the national character. There are all sorts of men – good, bad and, for the most part, indifferent – in every country, and in every race. Nothing is more wrong than to deny to an individual, on account of race or origin, his right to be judged on his personal merits and conduct. In a people of peculiar genius like the Jews, contrasts are more vivid, the extremes are more widely separated, the resulting consequences are more decisive.
At the present fateful period there are three main lines of political conception among the Jews, two of which are helpful and hopeful in a very high degree to humanity, and the third absolutely destructive.
First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life, and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, “I am an Englishman practising the Jewish faith.” This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the “National Jews” in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour.
The National Russian Jews, in spite of the disabilities under which they have suffered, have managed to play an honourable and useful part in the national life even of Russia. As bankers and industrialists they have strenuously promoted the development of Russia’s economic resources and they were foremost in the creation of those remarkable organisations, the Russian Co-operative Societies. In politics their support has been given, for the most part, to liberal and progressive movements, and they have been among the staunchest upholders of friendship with France and Great Britain.
International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.
If characterizing one of three groups of Jews makes one an antisemite, then Joseph Massad just defined himself as an antisemite - because guess who Churchill's third group of Jews is? Zionist Jews!
Zionism offers the third sphere to the political conceptions of the Jewish race. In violent contrast to international communism, it presents to the Jew a national idea of a commanding character. It has fallen to the British Government, as the result of the conquest of Palestine, to have the opportunity and the responsibility of securing for the Jewish race all over the world a home and a centre of national life. The statesmanship and historic sense of Mr. Balfour were prompt to seize this opportunity. Declarations have been made which have irrevocably decided the policy of Great Britain. The fiery energies of Dr. Weissmann, the leader, for practical purposes, of the Zionist project, backed by many of the most prominent British Jews, and supported by the full authority of Lord Allenby, are all directed to achieving the success of this inspiring movement.
Massad's single-minded hate of Zionism is comparable to Churchill's hate of Communism. If Churchill's words against "international Jews" are antisemitic, them Massad's decades-long battle to demonize Zionist Jews is no less.
And indeed it is more, because by denying that Jews have a right to self determination and by labeling all who have that desire as racist and colonialist as opposed to liberal and freedom-seeking, Massad is being directly antisemitic.
Which is why he is so desperate to change the definition of antisemitic to include Zionists.
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A few days ago, EoZhighlighted
the latest screed of Joseph Massad, who is a professor at Columbia University
and an occasional contributor
to Ali Abunimah’s “The Jewish state is our misfortune/Hail Hamas”-website. Elder
wondered in his post what Massad’s sources or evidence might be, and I pondered
the same question a few years ago, when I researched Massad’s writings on the
evil Zionist entity for several articles. I found at least a partial answer:
for some of his main “arguments,” Massad clearly relies on the kind of
“evidence” that is popular at the neo-Nazi site Stormfront
and that David
Duke promoted in his “minor
league Mein Kampf.”
You can read the post where I demonstrated this in
considerable detail here
(warning: it’s longish!); but if you
don’t have the time, you can just take the quiz I posted back then to
illustrate how hard it is to distinguish between Massad’s stuff and what’s
popular on Stormfront (correct answers at the end of this post; some of
the quotes have originally British spelling, I Americanized it to avoid giving
the game away).
1) “Nazism was a
boon to Zionism throughout the 1930s.”2) “For all
intents and purposes, the National Socialist government was the best thing to
happen to Zionism in its history.”3) “In Germany,
the average Jews were victims of the Zionist elite who worked hand in hand with
the Nazis.”4) “Hitler could
have just confiscated all the Jewish wealth. Instead he used the ‘Haavara
Program’ to help establish the State of Israel.”5) “Between 1933
and 1939, 60 percent of all capital invested in Jewish Palestine came from
German Jewish money through the Transfer Agreement.”6) “In fact,
contra all other German Jews (and everyone else inside and outside Germany) who
recognized Nazism as the Jews’ bitterest enemy, Zionism saw an opportunity to
strengthen its colonization of Palestine.”7) “Zionists
welcomed the Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies. Like the Nazis, they believed in
race-based national character and destiny. Like the Nazis, they believed Jews
had no future in Germany.8) “the Zionist
Federation of Germany […] supported the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, as they agreed
with the Nazis that Jews and Aryans were separate and separable races. This was
not a tactical support but one based on ideological similitude.”9) “Zionism […]
developed the idea of the first racially separatist planned community for the
exclusive use of Ashkenazi Jews, namely the Kibbutz.”10) “The Zionists
were afraid that the ‘Jewish race’ was disappearing through assimilation.”
Before I let you find out how you did, I should perhaps note
what I just found out: my articles on Massad got me an honorary mention on Stormfront!
As I noted in my post back then, Stormfront members shared and debated Massad’s
notorious Al Jazeeracolumn
“The last of the Semites,” which Jeffrey Goldberg immediately denounced as “one
of the most anti-Jewish screeds in recent memory.”
A few weeks later, one Stormfront member came across
my post and linked to it with some heartfelt compliments, including “not-so-hidden
Hasbara shill” who writes a “stinking blog, brimful with Israeli propaganda,
lies and deceit;” “a manic proponent of the Zionist doctrine and propaganda.”
But the Stormfront member noted that reading my post wasn’t entirely a waste of
time, because it lead to “another two very interesting Massad’s articles” –
which s/he liked so much that s/he promptly shared them…
Oh well, I do think I deserve their disdain – and Columbia
professor Joseph Massad deserves their admiration.
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Joseph Massad, of Columbia University, has an article (based on a recent speech he made) in Electronic Intifada that claims - like many antisemites do - that Ashkenazic Jews aren't really Jews. But I'm not sure if he is espousing the discredited Khazar theory, or something different:
It is true that both Judaism and Christianity are Palestinian religions. It is also an established historical fact that the inhabitants of what came to be called “Europe” later, whether Christians or Jews, had converted to these Palestinian religions centuries after the Palestinians had.
It is also true that these new Christians of what would become Europe never thought of themselves as direct descendants of the ancient Palestinian Christians who spoke Aramaic, but saw themselves correctly as more recent converts to this Palestinian religion.
Yet these same Christian converts often insisted that converts to Judaism in what would become Europe were somehow descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews who also spoke Aramaic at the time of the so-called Roman expulsion of the first century.
This was important because these converts to Christianity accused the converts to Judaism of killing the Palestinian Christ.
There is a lot of nonsense here, like calling Judaism and Christianity "Palestinian religions." That is an obvious attempt to claim some sort of special status for Palestinians today who have no relationship whatsoever with the biblical Land of Israel that is indeed the origin of both religions (and of course Islam is also modeled in no small part on Judaism.)
Mossad's flat assertion that Jews in Europe were converts is not footnoted so I cannot be sure which nonsense he is pushing. Outside the Khazar theory, there was a genetic study in 2013 that claimed that the matrilineal line of most Ashkenazic Jews came from women who converted to Judaism in Europe.
However, even that study was controversial and a more recent study shows that the women actually were from the Near East. And genetic studies of the patrilineal line have been almost unanimous in showing that Ashkenazic Jewish men also have origins in the Near East. Beyond that, a genetic linkage study of all Jews, Ashkenazic and Mizrahi, found them to be related and concluded "the most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant." Wikipedia has a fine roundup of the studies.
So Massad is a liar. His calling his lies an "established historical fact" is a bullying tactic to make anyone who disagrees pause - thinking that certainly a professor at Columbia wouldn't lie so blatantly. This is only one part of his writing where he is "thinking past the sale" - he wants to make it look like his assumptions for his hateful theories are "established facts" so that while you are thinking about his theories, he has already made you subconsciously believe that his assumptions are accurate.
Massad's lies are not innocent. He chooses his lies to be consistent with his anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian political beliefs (hence characterizing Judaism as a "Palestinian" religion.) And he couches them as "facts" in such a way that it takes time and effort to dissect his words to show how hollow his actual argument is.
I don't even have the time or the energy to refute Massad's other claims. (He circles back to his claim that the original Zionists were antisemites, for example.)
When the foundation of his argument is a lie, and one that is so easily disproven yet he insists is true without providing an iota of evidence, then he has already proven once again that he isn't interested in the academic pursuit of knowledge but in anti-Israel propaganda.
Columbia is right to allow all opinions to flourish on campus. It is not right to allow its professors to spout lies in a larger effort to radicalize students against Jews who believe in their right of self determination.
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Last week I - and many others - criticized an absurd article by Columbia professor Joseph Massad in Al Jazeera that pretty much said Zionists were Nazis and antisemitic, while those who are against Jewish self-determination were the only people who were against antisemitism.
Petra Marquardt-B. at JPost even created a little quiz to see if people could distinguish between Massad's hate and that from neo-Nazi websites. In fact, they are literally indistinguishable.
Surprisingly, Al Jazeera pulled the article after this criticism. Some things go even too far for them!
But not far enough for the rabid haters at Electronic Intifada. They are foaming at the mouth:
In an unprecedented act of political censorship Al Jazeera English has deleted an article by noted Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad after coming under intense criticism from Zionists in recent days.
The backlash has been so intense precisely because Massad goes to the core of Israel’s claim to represent Jews and to cast its critics as anti-Semites by showing that indeed it is Israel and Zionism that partake of the same anti-Semitism that targeted European Jews.
In doing so, Massad pulls the rug from under Zionists and Israel lobbyists by demonstrating that they are the anti-Semites and taking away the most formidable weapon they wield against critics of Israel: the accusation that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
By neutralizing this ideological weapon that Israel has used so effectively in the Western media to cover up its colonization of Palestine, Massad’s pro-Jewish position and strenuous attack on Zionist anti-Semitism is clearly understood by Israel lobby figures such as Goldberg as a complete obliteration of their ideological arsenal.
Yet, I showed easily how Massad's main argument, that EI considers "convincing," is simply a lie.
I'm actually surprised that Al Jazeera pulled it; I was not aware of anyone who complained to them. I'm sure some complained to Columbia for employing a professor for whom facts are mere props to be used, shaped or discarded at will.
(h/t Emet)
UPDATE: AJ put it back, then removed it, then put it back again. Nowhere could I find the slightest indication that pressure from Jewish or Zionist groups made them take it down to begin with.
Joseph Massad, the Columbia professor whose anti-Zionist arguments are often little more than proof by assertion, has a new piece in Al Jazeera that includes his usual pseudo-scholarship, and ends up being almost unbelievably offensive.
Here is the key section:
Scientific anti-Semitism insisted that the Jews were different from Christian Europeans. Indeed that the Jews were not European at all and that their very presence in Europe is what causes anti-Semitism. The reason why Jews caused so many problems for European Christians had to do with their alleged rootlessness, that they lacked a country, and hence country-based loyalty. In the Romantic age of European nationalisms, anti-Semites argued that Jews did not fit in the new national configurations, and disrupted national and racial purity essential to most European nationalisms. This is why if the Jews remained in Europe, the anti-Semites argued, they could only cause hostility among Christian Europeans. The only solution was for the Jews to exit from Europe and have their own country. Needless to say, religious and secular Jews opposed this horrific anti-Semitic line of thinking. Orthodox and Reform Jews, Socialist and Communist Jews, cosmopolitan and Yiddishkeit cultural Jews, all agreed that this was a dangerous ideology of hostility that sought the expulsion of Jews from their European homelands.
Is there anything wrong in this paragraph?
Massad is not your typical neanderthal Israel-hater. He is smart enough to hide his agenda and sprinkle his lies so subtly that it requires a word-by-word analysis to see where they are.
In this case, nearly all of this paragraph is slanted but accurate - except for five words.
"The only solution was for the Jews to exit from Europe and have their own country."
Nineteenth century anti-semites did not espouse Jews having their own country. They simply wanted to persecute and marginalize the Jews in their countries!
Modern Zionism did not work in concert with 19th century "scientific" anti-semitism, it was a response to it.
Here is the description of Jews in the 1898 International Yearbook describing the situation after two decades of "scientific" anti-semitism taking root in Europe:
During the year 1898, the persecution of the Jews continued in many parts of the world, taking the form of violent anti-Semitic outbreaks, especially in Austria-Hungary and France. In France the hatred of the Jews is especially marked among the lower classes of society, including the laboring classes, and it has been employed by socialistic and radical leaders for party ends. The political importance of French anti-Semitism can be seen in connection with the Dreyfus case. (See FRANCE.) In Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, it is not only the lower classes who are opposed to Jews, nor is the anti-Jewish fanaticism found exclusively in districts where the educational standard is low. Vienna is a great centre of anti-Semitism, the mayor of the city being himself an anti-Semitic agitator. A numerous element of the population in Germany and Italy are also hostile to the Jews. In Germany, the anti-Semites include some of the large landed proprietors, and old nobility. In Russia where the persecution of the Jews has led in recent years to an extensive migration of that despised sect, the persecution seems to come mainly from the official class. The Russian laws discriminate against Jews, forbidding them to live outside of certain specified districts, and to follow certain pursuits. It is this revival of the old-time spirit of persecution in Europe that has led to the so-called Zionist movement for the repeopling of Palestine by the Jews. ...
The growth of anti-Semitism within the past few decades has had much to do with the Zionistic movement, for it is only in countries where civil and religious liberty is denied to the Jew that there is a desire to colonize in Palestine under any form.
If the anti-semites wanted a state in Palestine for the Jews, where is the literature demanding this? Why were they restricting Jews to live in certain districts instead of encouraging their emigration?
Massad helpfully links to the hard-to-find pamphlet written by the apparent coiner of the word "anti-semite," Wilhelm Marr, where he explains "scientifically" why he has a problem with Jews in Europe. Not once does he say that the Jews must have their own state to solve this problem. That idea is wholly made up by Massad in order to pretend that Zionism is the same as anti-semitism.
This lying academic goes on to describe how Zionists, from Herzl onwards, allegedly collaborated with anti-semites - including, of course, Hitler - to help create Israel.
Massad is purposefully fudging cause and effect, because only with that lie can he continue to build his wholly fictional thesis and try to separate historic anti-semitism with anti-Zionism. Massad believes that anti-Arabism is the only real anti-semitism, and he goes on to ludicrously claim that German reparations to Jews after the Holocaust is only because Germans belatedly came to realize that Jews were really "white."
The article is a ludicrous and offensive twisting of history in order to demonize today's Jews. The good Jews in Massad's estimation were anti-Zionists who were wiped out in the Holocaust. He actually tries to imply that Hitler didn't target Zionist Jews:
The Jewish holocaust [note the lower case - EoZ] killed off the majority of Jews who fought and struggled against European anti-Semitism, including Zionism. With their death, the only remaining "Semites" who are fighting against Zionism and its anti-Semitism today are the Palestinian people.
This absurd piece reveals much - not about history or truth, but about Massad's seething hate and willingness to twist facts to fit his own agenda.
It is a stain on Columbia University that they keep this fraud employed.
Given the highly sensitive subject matter of this dialogue, the CPS faces an important choice. It can host academics interested in serious Palestine-related scholarship, or it can advance political interests under the guise of Palestine studies. Should it move in the latter direction, it could make the boundary between politics and scholarship more meaningless than ever. And there are already troubling signs that this is exactly what is happening.
To be sure, the Center represents a crucial development in a nascent field. “Very simply, there’s never been a dedicated space … for this kind of research,”says CPS co-director and anthropologist Brinkley Messick. Rashid Khalidi,the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia and fellow CPS co-director, hopes that the Center will help broaden a “tiny, narrow, not well-established” field by building an archive, hosting events, and awarding doctoral fellowships to Palestinian scholars. By pursuing these admirable goals, the CPS has the potential to cast new light on the Palestinian people, who are too often only known within the context of their relationship with Israel. And the leaders of the Center are aware that they must ensure that the Center’s activities fall within a scholarly mandate. “The last thing you want is a Middle East Institute or a center for Israel or Palestine that isn’t within the university mission,” Khalidi says. “We’d avoid doing is anything that’s directly related to any political activism.”
But there are signs that politics have already infiltrated the CPS. Take, for example, the fact that Joseph Massad (the professor accused of bullying students in 2004) is associated with the center. Massad’s body of work is a postmodern mash-up of high-minded critical theory and base innuendo. His book Desiring Arabs theorizes that homosexuality is a western construct that imperial powers imposed upon the Middle East and that a “gay international” cabal (consisting of groups like Amnesty International and the Human Rights Campaign) uses the rhetoric of minority rights to unfairly vilify Muslim regimes.
More troubling than this vilification of human rights organizations is that much of Massad’s work is overtly political—exactly the type of scholarship that the CPS purportedly intends to avoid.
...[U]naccompanied by a dedication to real expertise, the CPS will be little more than a clique of like-minded academics whose defining commonality is hostility toward Israel. In its current form, it’s likely that the first Palestine Center at an American university will lead the way not in “a new era of civility,” but, rather, in politicizing Middle East studies further than ever before.
...[Legal scholar Katherine] Franke’s own work reveals the perils of such uncertainty in mission. She told us that she focuses on “gender and sexuality and how the rights of LGBT people in Israel are being used to punish Israel’s Arab neighbors.” For her, one of Israel’s greatest accomplishments (the creation of one of the most tolerant societies in the Middle East) is linked to the country’s ceaseless persecution of Palestinian Arabs. The association of Mahmood Mamdani—the former directorof Columbia’s Institute of African Studies—with the CPS further illustrates the dangers of mission-creep. Mamdani justifies his involvement by pointing to a conference he helped to organize titled “Post-Apartheid Reflections on Israel and Palestine,” which taught him “how a thematic focus [on Palestine] could bring African scholars … into the mainstream of intellectual discussions.” Mamdani associates with Palestine studies, it seems, to increase the profile of his primary field. Moreover, he has used his background as an Africanist to attack Israel. In a 2002 speech at a pro-divestment teach-in, Mamdani argued that Israel was an apartheid state and a settler-colonial enterprise comparable to Liberia.
Both Franke and Mamdani use hostility toward Israel as a jumping-off point for specific academic inquiries—issues of sexual identity politics for Franke and comparative colonialism for Mamdani. Their involvement with the CPS helps elevate this reductive and opportunistic treatment of Israel and Palestine to the cutting-edge of a new academic field, turning the CPS into a platform for niche interests that, together, share an anti-Israel agenda.
I am more skeptical than the authors are about the chances that the CPS could ever be anything but political and anti-Israel. The authors say that "the Palestinian people... are too often only known within the context of their relationship with Israel" - but this is how they define themselves to begin with! The very history of the Palestinian Arabs, as such, cannot be said to have started before the era of modern Zionism. They were never a cohesive people after the Arab nations collectively decided to treat them as such for their own political purposes. They never defined their "ancient homeland" in terms outside of whatever lands Jews have political control over.
Yes, there were costumes sewn in Bethlehem and soap made in Nablus but there was, simply, no specifically"Palestinian" Arab culture before the 20th century. Any institute that attempts to be a center for Palestine studies cannot avoid these facts - either it has to make up a new, older culture and history or it needs to start this "history" in terms of Zionism. Either way, it becomes an inherently political institution.
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