Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Latest outrage at Columbia University: Inviting Ahmadinejad to speak

Columbia University has a long history of anti-Israel and anti-American antics.

First it was Professor Hamid Dabashi, a Columbia department chairman, who calls supporters of Israel "Gestapo apparatchiks" and wanted to sue CNN for biased coverage of 9/11.

Then 106 Columbia faculty signed a petition comparing Israel to South Africa apartheid.

Professor Nicholas De Genova, who teaches anthropology and Latino studies, stated that "The heritage of the victims of the Holocaust belongs to the Palestinian people. ... Israel has no claim to the heritage of the Holocaust." and that he wished for a "million Mogadishus."

George Saliba, a professor of Arabic and Islamic science, told a Jewish student, "You have no claim to the land of Israel ... no voice in this debate. You have green eyes, you're not a true Semite. I have brown eyes, I'm a true Semite."

Rashid Khalidi, head of Columbia's Middle East Institute, has stated that "occupation" began in 1948 and also criticized Yasir Arafat for being too flexible with Israel.

Columbia's president appointed a committee to look into claims of intimidation of students who held that Israel was not a racist, apartheid state, and his hand-picked committee members whitewashed all the incidents without interviewing any of the students who were harassed by professors. It also failed to criticize when Columbia professors canceled classes during an anti-Israel rally and encouraged students to attend.

Joseph Massad, associate professor, wrote an article for Al-Ahram that was effectively anti-semitic.

And then an anthropology professor, Nadia Abu el-Haj, wrote a book denying any Jewish connection to the biblical land of Israel, even as she admitted that she was not interested in using scientific methods to validate the huge amount of archaeological evidence.

Now, in the same tradition of embracing terrorists and despots, Columbia is inviting Iranian thug-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak there on Monday at their World Leaders' Forum.

At least Columbia University is consistent.

Guest post: Sophia on S/S, 9/11, W/M

From Sophia as a comment on this post:

What's the word for "eastophobia"?

We reflect some of the Orient's fear of the west, and exhibit a distressing ability to ignore the accomplishments of Oriental people along with a clear view of our own past.

The ironic thing about Israel, along with Greece, Lebanon, Turkey, and to some degree Morocco and the other states bordering the Med, is that they suffer from internal stress as well as external attacks precisely because they bridge East and West: they are traditional battlegrounds. Culturally they are extremely rich and complex because of this. Geostrategically they have long straddled trade routes and guarded the waters that link Europe, Africa, Western Asia, with the East.

In spite of our current difficulties, let's look to the ways we can learn from these ancient places. Modern Israel has managed to an extraordinary degree, to encompass people who come from worlds separated not only by distance, language and culture, but by time. There are Bedouin in Israel, Arab fellahin, Jews from Ethiopia, India, Russia, all over the Arab world, Iran, as well as the people of the better-known Western community. Lebanon just suffered another bomb blast today, killing an antiSyrian politician as well as several other people - again, we see a state under stress precisely because she is trying to turn to the modern world, while yet providing a bridge to the East.

I beg people, as a lifetime student of Eastern art, history and culture, not to succumb to the temptation to damn the Orient, as many, fearful of change, have damned the West.

Rather, let's keep working to learn about each other. We Jews, as a cosmopolitan people, live in the most sophisticated Western cities, yet a majority in Israel are people of the East. Are they not modern, accomplished, possessed of brilliance? Let's find people in the Arab world, people in Iran, in Pakistan, in North Africa, with whom we can share ideas, with whom we can mutually grow and find ways to save our planet. Obviously this is a challenge, especially when, as my partner just pointed out, governments are repressive and ordinary people are terrorized by extremists brandishing automatic weapons, and blowing up simple shoppers at the market. It's hard to find ways to communicate with Iraqis when the simplest pleasures, a trip to the bookstore, the weekly animal market, have been blown asunder by a terrorist's bomb.

Yet, we must keep trying.

For, much as Israel is wrongly made a target and a lynchpin, the conflicts surrounding her are similarly distractions from some painful realities: desertization, burgeoning populations, hunger, spiraling energy and food costs, environmental damage. It will take mutual cooperation to solve those problems.

M/W represent a faction of humanity, I think, who've actually made a living from the nexus of realpolitik and the commercial world: people who realize that chaos results in high energy (and other) prices, which in turn benefits elites at the expense of planet, animals and people.

Chaos like this was deliberately fomented during the British Empire, who actually referred to it as "The Great Game," enthusiastically played in the East with their Russian foes. What does it matter, after all, if a little nation or a little people is destroyed, as long as the bottom line benefits and people thousands of miles away feel more "secure"? Do some reading about Zbigniew Brzezinski and Afghanistan, or Baker and Israel and Lebanon, or study Nixon and the Brits and their behavior toward Israel during the Yom Kippur War. It's enough to chill the blood.

So: Left or Right, let's not buy into this ugly scheme. Our well-being and security are important, yes, but there are lives, valuable lives, valuable people, in the East as well. One of the most awful things in the late 20th century must be the destruction of Afghanistan, and it's led to nothing but woe - for the Afghan people, for the Russians, and now, for America too.

Meanwhile, we Jews face a daunting challenge here at home in America because elements from the Left are apparently buying into what is essentially a far right wing construct: international realism, which seeks temporary advantage by playing with nations and their peoples as though they were pawns. Worse, decades of propaganda - some Left, some Right, some Communist, some Islamist, have distorted the Arab/Israeli conflict - as "Jewish power" or "Jewish conspiracies" were distorted in the past - out of all proportion. I believe that a residue of antisemitism in the Western world is part of this, but also, there's probably a great deal of state-sponsored media and academic pressure supporting the burgeoning judenhass now becoming impossible to ignore. I just read an article on Harry's Place, a British left-yet-not-antizionist blog, which details how Iran's official propaganda wing, Press TV, is trying to persuade people in the West to engage with Islamist movements. Many of these movements are explicitly antisemitic (not "just" antizionist"). A piece on HuffPo, written by "a former Republican and FBI agent", is frighteningly antisemitic in tone: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B1DF75F4-D152-4CC7-ADB6-D40DF0FFB3CB.

The American left has traditionally supported the underdog, yet in this mirror world, the tiny Jewish state/Jewish people, have become projected as monsters. Therefore the American left is reacting, with tender heart but apparently without benefit of education: Sabra and Shatilla continue to be seen as an Israeli crime - why? Because nobody studies the Lebanese Civil War, really studies it, especially from the standpoint of the Palestinian/Lebanese conflict, which would explain a great deal about Sabra/Shatilla and indeed the very reason why Israel was in Lebanon in the first place. Another aspect of this: the Christian Lebanese were characterized early on in the conflict as "right wing", well-off or even "fascist", and therefore undeserving of support, particularly in view of the fact that they were in conflict with the Palestinians, who have been enshrined as the uber-underdog, and whose tactics and motives therefore cannot be seriously challenged.

I'm at a loss how to combat these rushes to judgement in a world of 10 second sound bytes and bloody, distorting visuals. How can ordinary people combat powers - right or left, government or religious or political, who are deliberately focused on manipulation of fact and opinion?

Media doesn't help; it too is profit-driven and/or state-owned - or even run by religious political parties, like al Manar and al Jazeera; and can no longer be counted on for even basic objectivity, but seems to operate under the banner, "If it bleeds, it leads," and focuses on certain issues at the expense of others far more serious. For example, I saw a poster downtown yesterday, that claims some 33 million people have been displaced by war. Yet, CNN doesn't cover them. It covers OJ Simpson and devotes a hugely disproportionate amount of time to, you guessed it, the Arab-Israeli conflict - which loses proportion and context - much as "G*d's Jewish Warriors", all 5 of them, more or less, rated a full two-hour presentation by Christiane Amanpour - who characterized a New York couple as wearing diamonds yet.

Israel, one would think, is a giant, powerful monster of a state, whose people are similarly omniscient and, heaven forfend, rich!, in addition to being conspiratorial, law-breaking, frightening individuals who terrify poor little WASP power-brokers and corporate and political leaders like Charles Percy, Jimmy Carter, GHW Bush, and James Baker, not to mention Walt/Mearscheimer, who claim they are being "silenced."

I have no answers to these challenges, other than to pray that people read, study, and use their common sense. Periodically, Jews have been attacked in frenzies of bloodletting in times of famine, plague, dislocation and war. It's almost ritualistic. The very absurdity of this situation might well prove to be our salvation: surely, people will see how ridiculous this is?

Just a small point on the initial paragraphs: Far East culture, like Arab culture, also seems to be based on honor/shame but it proves that honor/shame is not inherently immoral, rather that the way Arabs choose to internalize that paradigm often is. - EoZ

A thundering silence

The Waqf continues its destruction of priceless antiquiities, and the Israeli government - and Israel Antiquities Authority - continue to do nothing. Here is an article by Herschel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review:

No one really cares. But that puts me in an elite group: It includes two of Israel's most prominent Jerusalem archaeologists (Gaby Barkay and Eilat Mazar) — and me.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Waqf goes on tearing up Jerusalem's Temple Mount, where once the Jewish Temple stood. The week before last, they hit an ancient wall that might be the foundation of a wall from the Second Temple complex built by Herod the Great.

It's an old/new story. For the past 35 years the Muslim religious authority known as the Waqf, to whom Israel has been given custody of the Temple Mount, has been periodically digging it up — illegally. (That's the Israel Supreme Court's characterization.) Several years ago, for example, the Waqf used mechanical equipment to dig a huge hole for a wide stairway down to a greatly expanded underground mosque, dumping hundreds of tons of dirt from the mount into the adjacent Kidron Valley.

When Zachi Zweig, a graduate student of Barkay's, started looking for antiquities in the Waqf dump, the Israel Antiquities Authority had Zweig arrested for digging without a permit. Since then, Barkay has obtained the permit and, with Zweig, they have engaged in a multi-year project sifting this archaeologically rich dump. They have found thousands of ancient artifacts going back 3000 years, including a seal impression of a probable brother of someone mentioned in the Bible.

Now the Waqf wants to lay new telephone and electric lines on the mount. Under Israeli law, in an area that might contain antiquities, the trench must be excavated by professional archaeologists. (The same holds true for construction: Such areas must first be professionally excavated, most often by the Israel Antiquities Authority.) The Waqf simply ignores this law, however. A few weeks ago they began digging a utilities trench almost five feet deep, often going down to bedrock. Worse still, the workmen were using mechanical equipment — anathema to any professional archaeologist in such a site.

It's certainly all right for the Waqf to lay new telephone and electrical lines. But there would seem to be no reason why the trench could not first be excavated by professional archaeologists who dig by hand and with great care to document the context of all discoveries — no reason except the Waqf's unwillingness to recognize Israeli law.

On July 18, 2007, I published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, headed "Biblical Destruction," protesting the Waqf excavation. It has had no effect. Since then, the excavation has been extensively expanded.

Observers have reported seeing numerous antiquities in the excavated dirt and in the trench, including mosaic tesserae, a quantity of pottery vessels (some of which had been freshly broken by the tractor scoop) and carefully carved and decorated building stones typical of the Second Temple period. Last week, as I said earlier, the excavation hit part of an unusually wide wall that has now been destroyed. It could well have been part of the Temple complex.

Barkay and Mazar continue to protest vehemently and publicly. But they have mostly been met with silence. The archaeological community as such has not raised its voice. Each archaeologist is concerned with his or her own dig, not someone else's violation of the antiquities law. And why jeopardize a career by making trouble when all the well-known political names and faces remain silent? Yes, a few newspaper articles have appeared, but nothing serious. The Antiquities Authority has been queried on several occasions about this violation of Israel's antiquities laws — on Judaism's holiest site — but the response has always been the same: "No comment."

This thundering silence perhaps explains why the Israeli embassy in Washington has not provided any account or explanation of this depredation on the Temple Mount. Why raise questions and create a problem when nobody really cares?

I wrote to the Prime Minister's office (prime.minister'soffice@it.pmo.gov.il) and received a very inadequate reply:

We acknowledge receipt of your recent e-mail to the Prime Minister's Office regarding excavations on the Temple Mount.

Please be assured that the Israeli Antiquities Authority is closely following the work being carried out on the Temple Mount, and is ensuring that there is no damage to any antiquities unearthed.

Thank you for writing to express your concern.

To which I replied:

I'm sorry, but this is not an acceptable answer. The very fact that bulldozers are being used in the holiest part of the planet shows that politics is trumping archaeology, not to mention Judaism.

It is shameful that the Jewish state cares more about Muslim reaction to careful excavations than Jewish concerns over much more sensitive desecrations that are being carried out now.

You can also write to the Israel Antiquities Authority here.

Sabra/Shatilla, 9/11, and Walt/Mearsheimer

Right around now is the 25th anniversary of the massacre of Palestinian Arabs by Christian Phalangists in Sabra and Shatila, Lebanon.

Last week was the sixth anniverary of 9/11.

And the Israel Lobby book is now ranked #73 at Amazon (with mostly glowing reviews.)

What do these events have in common?

This article, written by John Darbyshire right after 9/11, explains it all:

ack in 1982 there were some horrible massacres at two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Christian Lebanese Arabs actually did the killing; but the Israeli army was in the neighborhood, and was responsible, at some theoretical level, for keeping the peace in the zone that included the camps. Because of this, the Israelis took much of the brunt of the world's outrage at the killings. Commenting on these events, the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, remarked in disgust: "Goyim kill goyim, and they blame the Jews!"
I've been getting the same feeling from some of my e-mail. The fundamental reason America is under attack by Arab terrorists, several dozen people want me to know, is that the U.S. supports Israel. And the only reason we do that, several of them have said, or hinted, is because of the political power of the Jewish lobby here in the U.S.A. A few of my correspondents have expressed themselves more ... bluntly than that. Put it this way: While I have not yet encountered the word "bloodsuckers" (perhaps my readership isn't "diverse" enough), some of this stuff comes pretty close — though I should say in fairness, most is argued on cold national-interest grounds. At any rate, a lot of people feel that the mass killing of Americans by Arab terrorists is all the fault of Israel and those American politicians who, for low and disreputable motives, or from sheer blindness to America's true ideals and interests, support her. Goyim kill goyim, and they blame the Jews.

Setting aside the statistical certainty that some of the dead Americans are Jewish (as, in high statistical probability, some were of Arab origins), and at the risk of yet more ill-tempered or abusive e-mails, I am going to declare that I don't think these recent outrages can be blamed on the Jews, nor even on pro-Israel American politicians. The root phenomenon is not American involvement in Middle Eastern affairs: The root phenomenon is hesperophobia.

This word was coined by the political scientist Robert Conquest. Its roots are the Greek words hesperos, which means "the west" and phobos, which means "fear," but which when used as an English suffix can also carry the meaning "hate." Hesperophobia is fear or hatred of the West. [While I'm in the classical stuff, by the way, I committed a breach of good manners in my last posting by inserting a Latin tag without translation. I am sorry. Oderint dum metuant means "Let them hate us, so long as they fear us." Seneca rebuked Cicero for saying it, though it seems to have been current among educated late-republican Romans.]

Here is the news: A lot of people out there hate us. The name "Durban" mean anything? In China, in India, in Pakistan, in Indonesia and Malaysia, in Africa, and in the Arab countries, European civilization — the West — is widely hated. Matter of fact, quite a lot of Europeans and Americans hate it, too, as you will know if you spend much time on college campuses.

I can't see any strong reason for believing that if the state of Israel were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, hesperophobia would disappear with it. Not even just Arab hesperophobia would decline. A common word for Europeans in the Arabic language is feringji, from "Frank," i.e. crusader. Arabs don't hate us because we support Israel. They hate us because we humiliated them, showed up the gross inferiority of their culture. To them, and similarly humiliated peoples, we are the other, detested and feared in a way we can barely understand. Things got really bad in the 19th century. When European society achieved industrial lift-off, Europeans were suddenly buzzing all over the world like a swarm of bees. They encountered these other cultures, that had been vegetating in a quiet conviction of their own superiority for centuries (or in the case of the Chinese, millennia). When these encounters occurred, the encountered culture collapsed in a cloud of dust. Some of them, like the Turks, managed to reconstitute themselves as more or less modern nations; others, like the Arabs and the Chinese, are still struggling with the trauma of that encounter. Neither the Arabs nor the Chinese, for example, have yet been able to attain rational, constitutional government. For a devastating look at the paleolithic condition of politics and society in the Arab world, I strongly recommend my colleague David Pryce-Jones's book, The Closed Circle.

The 1991 Gulf War showed how little has changed since those first encounters. Here were the armies of the West: swift, deadly, efficient, equipped and organized, under the command of elected civilians at the head of a robust and elaborate constitutional structure. And here were the Arabs: a shambling, ill-nourished, shoeless rabble, led by a mad gangster-despot. (That was their Arabs. There were also, of course, our Arabs — the Kuwaitis and Saudis, cowering in their plush-lined air-conditioned bunkers being waited on by their Filipino servants while we did their fighting for them.) Final body counts: the West, 134 dead, the Arabs, 20,000 or more. The superiority of one culture over another has not been so starkly demonstrated since a handful of British wooden ships, at the end of ten-thousand-mile lines of communications, brought the Celestial Empire to its knees 150 years earlier. The Chinese are still mad about that: They are still making angry, bitter movies about the Opium Wars. A hundred and 50 years from now, the Arabs will not have forgotten the Gulf War.

If you haven't spent some time in its company, the depth, and bitterness of hesperophobia in these cultures is hard to imagine. As Thomas Friedman points out in today's New York Times, Palestinian suicide bombers do not target yeshivas, synagogues, or religious settlements. They go for shopping malls or Sbarro's outlets. Sure, they hate the Jews, but they hate the West as much, or more.

Israel is not a cause of any of this, except to the degree that Israeli culture is essentially Western. If the present state of Israel were inhabited by Christian Lithuanians or Frenchmen, the hatred would be nearly as intense. Nearly, not completely: Hatred of the Jews has been built into Arab-Moslem culture since the time of Mohammed. There is a tale you will hear from Arab apologists that the Jews were contented and well treated in the old Arab-Moslem empires. This is nonsense: More often than not, they were treated like swine. For a true account, read Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial, or Gil Carl Alroy Behind the Middle East Crisis. From the Arab point of view, Israel, or any Western state on "Arab land," is an outrage, an illegitimate creation, a crusader state. The fact that the Jews had a wealthy and powerful nation on that land three thousand years ago counts for nothing. Israel is, from the point of view of most Arabs, an alien graft that must not be allowed to "take." It is a reminder of what can barely be thought of without acute psychic pain: the squalid, hopeless, irredeemable inferiority of one's own culture by comparison with another.

So, so, so, is this any of America's business? What are we doing, meddling in the Middle East? Where is our interest? Well, U.S. politicians must speak for themselves, but if I had any position of authority in any Western nation, I would be urging full support for Israel, and I am not Jewish. (Following my Passover column, in fact, a lot of NRO readers, along with at least one ex-editor of The New Republic, believe I am an anti-Semite.) It's a matter of cultural solidarity. We of the West must hang together, or else we shall hang separately. American isolationists simply do not understand how much we are hated in other places.

What, after all, does the Buchananite program offer us, if carried through? We have no troops in Israel to be withdrawn. If we withdraw our aid, the Israelis will be less able to defend themselves against the Arabs. Should we just let the free market take over, U.S. arms manufacturers selling weapons to them cash on the nail? Apparently not: Several of my correspondents have explained to me that what so enrages the Arabs is the sight of their people being killed "by American weapons." Oh. No weapons, then (and presumably we should try to repatriate the ones they already have — lots of luck with that, guys). But if we don't arm the Israelis, who will? While other hesperophobic countries — China, for example — are gleefully arming the Arabs and other Israel-haters like Iran, and pocketing the profits?

And the end of it all will be ... what? Inevitably, without our support, it will be the destruction of Israel. They are so few, and the Arabs so many. The Arabs will overwhelm that tiny state, and there will be such an orgy of massacre as has not been seen since the Rape of Nanking. And we shall be doing ... what? Watching it on our TVs, with a six-pack and a bucket of Nacho chips in hand? That's the Buchananite vision? If so, it is a vision of cowards and fools, and I want no part of it.

Israel's culture is ours. She is part of the West. If she goes down, we have suffered a defeat, and the howling, jeering forces of barbarism have won a victory. You don't have to be Zionist, nor even Jewish, to support Israel. You don't have to be in the pocket of the Israeli congressional lobbies, or a suck-up to "powerful pro-Zionist interests." You don't have to pretend not to notice the occasional follies and cruelties of Israeli policy. You don't have to forget about the U.S.S. Liberty or Jonathan Pollard. You just have to think straight. You just have to understand that the war between civilization and barbarism is being fought today just as it was fought at Chalons and Tours, at the gates of Kiev and Vienna, by the hoplites at Marathon and the legions on the Rhine. It is, as you have heard a thousand times, this past few days, a war; and the thing about war is, you have to take sides, and close your eyes to your allies' imperfections for the duration. There isn't any choice. What happened this week was not, or not only, an act of anti-Americanism, anti-Israelism, or anti-Semitism. It was in part all those things: but more than anything else, it was an act of hesperophobia.

Hamas' racist slur against Rice

Hamas referred to Condoleeza Rice as a "black snake" on Al Aqsa TV yesterday (from the MEMRI blog, phrase circled):

Just waiting for the leftists to condemn them for their racism.....

"Hostile entity"

AFP's biases are obvious here:

Israel declared the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity" on Wednesday, clearing the way for shutting off basic supplies to the Hamas-run territory in revenge for rocket fire.
The Western-shunned Islamist movement slammed the decision as "collective punishment" for the 1.5 million residents of the impoverished territory, one of the world's most densely populated places. (see here - EoZ)
A senior UN official also said the move was against international law, while the United States said it had received assurance from Israel that it would not affect the humanitarian situation in the territory.
"Following extensive legal consulations, Israel has decided to declare Gaza as a hostile entity, with all the international implications," a senior Israeli official told AFP after a meeting of Israel's powerful security cabinet.
An official statement said the unanimous decision would affect supplies of electricity and fuel to the impoverished territory, where Hamas seized control three months ago. Israel provides Gaza with the majority of both.

The elephant in the room is, why doesn't Egypt supply the electricity and water to their Arab brethren in Gaza? Why is it a "declaration of war" for Israel to reduce services to its enemies but when Egypt refuses to provide them to begin with it doesn't mean anything?

Take a wild guess.

A Muslim student's "research into his religion"

From AP:

A Scottish college student who prosecutors said became an aspiring suicide bomber after scouring extremist Islamic sites on the Internet was convicted of terrorism offenses Monday.
A jury at Glasgow's High Court found Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, guilty of four terrorism offenses and also of causing a disturbance by telling fellow students he planned to become a suicide bomber.
Prosecutors said during the four-week trial that Siddique was watched by security agents for several months before he was arrested in April 2006 as he tried to board a flight from Glasgow to Lahore, Pakistan.
Siddique, from the town of Clackmannanshire in central Scotland, had stored and posted guides to bomb-making, guns and explosives on a network of Web sites, prosecutors said.
Defense lawyer Aamer Anwar claimed Siddique was merely conducting research into his religion and was the victim of heightened sensitivity fed by terror attacks.

So that's what they are calling it nowadays!

Rabbi negotiating with Hamas

Palestine Press Agency (Arabic) reports that an Israeli rabbi is negotiating with Hamas:

Presse source revealed Palestinian official disclosed that the number of Jewish rabbis mediate between Hamas and the Israeli government to bring calm to ensure cessation of Palestinian resistance from the Gaza Strip against the Israeli army to stop its operations in the sector.

The source said the newspaper "Middle East", published today, that the rabbis group, headed by Menachem Fromn, initiated contacts with the government official Ismail Haniya article and suggested it be transferred suggestions mutual calm between Israel and Hamas, provided that the successful prevention of resistance movements Hamas from launching any attack from Gaza Strip.

The source pointed out that Fromn already contacted the Deputy Minister of the Israeli army, General Vilnai and careful presentation of the mediation efforts, with the latter expressed enthusiasm for the idea, said the source, adding that there was an effort Palestinians and Israelis because expands under which authorities will be required to take a position on the truce, specifically clergy and religious institution in Gaza, and not only the position of resistance movements.

The rabbi, Menachem Froman, is certainly unusual. While he himself is a founder of Gush Emunim and he is rabbi of the settlement of Tekoa, he has met with many Hamas and Fatah leaders over the years, including Sheikh Yassin and Yasir Arafat. On the other hand he is a strong opponent of "disengagement" and even moved his family to Gush Katif beforehand. He says that he would rather live in Tekoa under Arab rule if Israel gives it away.

"Quixotic" seems an understatement.

Dozens killed in Syrian/Iranian chemical weapon "work accident"

Ynet:

Dozens of Syrian military officers and Iranian engineers were killed about two months ago in an a chemical weapons accident, Jane's Magazine reported Monday, revealing new details on the incident which took place in a secret weapons facility.

According to the report by the British magazine, the explosion occurred early in the morning on July 26, in a factory in the city of Halab, as the officers were attempting to mount a chemical warhead with mustard gas on a Scud-C missile.

A fire which started in the missile's engine led to an explosion near a storage location of chemical substances. The blast spread lethal chemical agents, including mustard gas, VX gas and sarin nerve gas, which are considered extremely toxic and are banned for use according to international treaties.

Jane's Magazine reports that the explosion killed 15 Syrian officers and dozens of Iranian engineers who were in the facility. Dozens of people were injured.

The incident was reported at the time by Syria's official news agency, but the report only included information on the Syrian casualties and did not mention the Iranian representatives.

The Syrian report also claimed that the explosion was caused by a "heat wave" in the country, although the blast took place at around 4:30 am, and that the Syrian government rejected the possibility of sabotage.

My, my, Syrians and Iranians have been busy!

Let's count the international condemnations of these uses of WMD, when the intended target is merely filled with Jews. The count is so far at zero.

Today's Palestan violence

A man killed his brother in a financial dispute, killing him with a large 80 lb. boulder.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad clashed outside a mosque, four injured.

The 2007 Palestinian Arab self-death count is now at 525.

UPDATE: A Gaza man was murdered in a Clan Clash. 526.

Zionism and the intense desire for peace with Arabs

In the past couple of days, an article has been circulated by one M. Shahid Alam, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, which it appears started at The American Muslim and then flew quickly throughout far-left and Arab sites:

The Zionist Question

by M. Shahid Alam

In recent times, no nationalist project has been so completely mythologized by its partisans as Zionism. In the construction of nearly all aspects of its history, the official Zionist narrative is often at variance – even complete variance – with the facts as they are known to the rest of the world: and, more recently, even as they have been documented by some Zionist historians.

Yet few Zionists would deny one central fact of their history: and that is the history of violence that has attended the insertion of Jewish colons into the Middle East. The history of the Zionist movement in Palestine – it can scarcely be disputed – has been attended by violence between the Jewish settlers and the Palestinians; it has led to unending conflicts between Arab societies and Israel; and these conflicts continue to draw Western powers, especially the United States since 1945, into ever widening clashes with the Islamic world.

The history of this violence was contained in the Zionist idea itself. Violence is integral to Zionism: not incidental to it.

Mr. Alam goes on to provide a highly selective history of Zionism that supports his thesis.

Also, James Abourezk yesterday quotes Ilan Pappe again in support of his thesis that Zionists engaged in "ethnic cleansing" against Arabs.

It is very difficult to be objective on any topic, and historians will naturally - usually subconsciously - gravitate towards the facts that support their pre-existing worldview while ignoring or minimizing those that disagree with them. In these two cases, however, these are not innocent subconscious errors - these opinions are so far from the truth that it would be laughable if it wasn't for the fact that a majority of the world believes them now.

Any objective observer of the history of Zionism - real, on-the-ground Zionism, the one that our parents and grandparents grew up with, the kind that the original pioneers in Israel were a part of - would know that Zionism has always not only been interested in peace, but it has been obsessed with peace. It is not an exaggeration to say that the idea of peace with the Arabs has permeated Zionist thought.

I have spent many hours reading the Palestine Post archives from 1932-1950. Nowhere in those pages does one see any whiff of "ethnic cleansing;" on the contrary, the ability to live in peace with the Arabs is an obsession, from the early Zionist leaders like Weizmann and Ben Gurion down to the ordinary people who wrote letters.

Just as an example, here are some articles from a single, 4-page issue of the Palestine Post, from March 10, 1946.

The headlining article was the testimony that Chaim Weizmann gave to the Anglo American Inquiry Committee. While he passionately defends Zionism and demands the repeal of the infamous White Paper, Weizmann repeatedly says that the Arabs would become an important part of a Jewish state and that no prejudice is meant against them.

A separate analysis of Weizmann's words shows that the editors of the paper shared his feelings - while the Arabs may not be 100% happy with a Jewish state, it is the lesser of evils compared to the idea of Jews not having the right to self-determination, and the Arabs under Zionist rule have nothing to fear:

This is not hate, this is not "ethnic cleansing" - this is Zionism as it was practiced and believed in by the pre-state Palestinian Jews.

In another article, testimony was given regarding the ability of Palestine to absorb immigrants, and the witness also took pains to emphasize that Arabs would not be hurt by Jewish immigration, and in fact the Zionists expected and hoped that the Arab standard of living would increase:

Obviously, the Arabs of the neighboring nations cared little about whether they would be working for Jews, because they were still illegally immigrating into Palestine as fast as they could:

Amazingly, even though the Jewish woman was deported for her illegal immigration, the Zionist Palestine Post considered this story - where Arabs were saying that Jewish-enriched Palestine was a paradise - as "good news." If there is any bigotry here, it is against Arab Jews!

And all of this goodwill towards Arabs was occuring even as some Arabs were hardly returning the favor:

In the face of unending hostility from their Arab neighbors, these Zionists still clung to a vision of co-existence and peace - a mindset that continues to this day. (Check out how many Israeli stamps have been issued with the theme of "peace".)

It is easy to pick and choose individual quotes here and there - some real, some imaginary - by Zionists that would, in the aggregate, make it appear that they felt otherwise. But when one wants to see the truth about Zionism, all one has to do is pick up any Zionist newspaper at random from that time period. Rewriting history is easy, but rewriting source materials is impossible. The context is all in the newspapers of the day, in all its mundane detail - you will not find the hate and vitriol that is so pervasive in Arab media even today. It is abundantly clear which side wanted peace and which wanted war - in 1929, in 1946, in 1967 and in 2007.

The truth cannot be erased, no matter how much the Israel-bashers try to. Those who claim that Zionism is predicated on violence, like Pappe, Abourezk and Alam, are simply liars.

Nice summary of Columbia tenure controversy

From the Columbia Spectator:

The Trouble With Tenure
By Chris Kulawik
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 18, 2007

As a generation of controversial Columbia academics trudge toward tenure, get ready for a fight. Normally a mechanism to protect and embolden the research of legitimate scholars, it can and will be abused by “scholars” who, without such protection, already masquerade punditry and politics as scholarship. Concerned students and alumni cannot allow these polemicists a free pass.

For those who missed Spectator’s sparse coverage of the brewing controversy, Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropology professor of Palestinian descent, published a controversial book called Facts on the Ground. Critics reject Abu El-Haj’s contentious hypothesis that ancient Israelites did not live in what is today Israel. They argue that her work is misleading, if not unscholarly and slanderous. They posit three criticisms of Abu El-Haj, all worthy of consideration.

First, concerned alumni argue, Abu El-Haj is not an archeologist. Rather, Abu El-Haj studied in the Bryn Mawr anthropology department with Barnard President Judith Shapiro. For a scholar with a limited professional background in the subject, she is not in a position to make many of the claims she does. Second, many respected scholars passionately disagree with her findings. Weighing in on the subject, the New York Times cites fellow faculty member, Alan F. Segal, a professor of religion and Jewish studies at Barnard, who opines, “There is every reason in the world to want her to have tenure, and only one reason against it—her work.”

To be fair, Abu El-Haj has her share of supporters, including many in her notoriously like-minded discipline. No doubt talented individuals in their own right, they are anything but objective and impartial. Finally, critics take issue with Abu El-Haj’s postmodernist and unabashedly relativist approach. Dr. Candace de Russy, a member of the SUNY Board of Trustees, writes online,
“In her introduction, El-Haj explains that she works by ‘rejecting a positivist commitment to scientific method,’ writing, instead, within a scholarly tradition of ‘post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism, and critical theory and [...] in response to specific postcolonial political movements.’”

Such abstraction in a discipline as evidentially and methodologically oriented as archeology is inherently counterintuitive. I too am not an archeologist, but with just a rudimentary knowledge of the field, it appears that one of two things must be true: either Abu El-Haj stumbled upon one of the greatest findings of the young millennium, or she practices faulty scholarship. Consensus and common sense seems to lean toward the latter. Still, a greater, far more contentious fight looms. Assistant professor Joseph Massad, noted anti-Israel polemicist, lumbers toward tenure and a place in Columbia’s 20-year plan.

Massad, some will argue to great effect, has yet to produce a piece of scholarship not loaded with anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric. Much of his scholarly work, equally at home on an op-ed page as his classroom, must be read to be believed. Once charged with classroom intimidation and violations of academic freedom, Massad has emerged as the poster boy for an increasingly political and activist Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. To many, myself included, the thought of Joseph Massad as a facet of Columbia life for the next several decades is a frightening and wholly untenable proposition. There is no place within the academic establishment for thinly-veiled demagoguery. Individual departments or tenure committees must recognize this and act accordingly. To abandon their responsibilities is to commit a great disservice to the University.

To circumvent the inevitable criticism, let’s clarify: this is not a call to discriminate against unpopular ideas, but poor scholarship. Consider for the sake of this rejoinder the life and work of Edward Said. For all the rock-throwing and pro-Palestine sentiment, the late Columbian was a brilliant scholar who made significant contributions to not only his discipline, but academia and society at large. Agree with him or not, he was, unequivocally, one of the great minds of the 20th century. There’s no denying that a scholar of Said’s stature deserved tenure. Unfortunately, Massad is no Said. If it were simply a matter of denying tenure to professors with different political beliefs than my own, the ivory tower would be a pretty lonely place.

For all the gray area, convoluted processes, and controversy, there’s no way for Columbia to avoid the looming tenure battles—try as it might. Instead, the Columbia community must assert its right to secure objective, transparent, and academic proceedings. We must remember that tenure is both a reward and honor not to be taken—or given—lightly and without merit.

Chris Kulawik is a Columbia College senior majoring in political science.

Palestinian Arab "Kadima"?

Palestine Today reports on a number of businessmen trying to create a "Kadima"-like political party to bridge the gap between Hamas and Fatah (autotranslated):

Palestinian sources revealed that a number of businessmen and academics Palestinians began setting up a political party in an attempt to break the political impasse procedure, after they had received encouraging signals from President Mahmoud Abbas and some leaders of the Hamas movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in preparation for contesting the forthcoming legislative elections.

According to the sources, based on the party confirmed that they will of the Palestinian people something different, especially in light of political division and interactions among the largest movements in the Palestinian territories (Hamas and Fatah), and that this party will be a copy of Palestinian party "Kadima" Israeli attract voters of the two traditional "Labor" and the bloc "Likud".

It seeks authors of the new party to attract a number of leaders and cadres of the Hamas movement and what "moderates" and the leaders of the Fatah-corruption involved, in addition to some leaders of the Palestinian factions, the National Action; To join the new party's founding, or at least to obtain their support.

The sources considered that the successful annexation of the two leaders of the party give it a strong push savior of the Palestinians, as a reliable party officials that many Palestinians do not belong to the "Fatah" and "Hamas" and want to see a new party could provide them a better future for their cause.

Now, what could a political party that takes terrorists from Fatah and terrorists from Hamas look like?

It's a real head-scratcher.

Abourezk, part 3

I have continued to write in the comments section of the California Literary Review, and James Abourezk just wrote another comment a well. Here are some of the latest:

M.R. Khan Says:
September 16th, 2007 at 2:51 am As a former student of Mearsheimer and Walt and a Mid-East scholar at UC Berkeley, it was refreshing to read such a lucid and informed review in the CLR. The vitriol with which Likudniks in this country attack any criticism of the well documented atrocities and militancy of the Israeli right is underscored in some of the responses here and proves the critics of this lobby right...

Elder Says:
September 16th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I can’t help but notice that, for all of the supposed “vitriol” my posts here contained, not one of those who are defending Abourezk has been able to find anything that I have written about him or his sources that is incorrect.

It is also a bit humorous to see that somehow the all-powerful Israel Lobby, of which I seem to be a part, manages to not only let books like Walt/Mearsheimer’s and Jimmy Carter’s to be published, but also allows them to be best sellers. We are so sloppy that we even allow a forum such as this to exist, where people openly defend a person - who is on video supporting terrorists - as a purveyor of truth and a great person to review a book that blames all of America’s problems on a small cabal of Zionists.

We Lobbyists must be slipping badly!
Gordon Says:
September 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Elder, you say that Abourezk is on video supporting terrorists. How typical. Your arguments lack merit so you resort to smear tactics. Moreover, who is really guilty of supporting terrorists? The supporters of Israeli ethnic cleansing or those who oppose it? Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
atheo Says:
September 16th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Why did seven well equipped Arab armies attempt to destroy the poorly armed and newly founded ‘Jewish State’?

The baseless myth, of how the Arab armies wanted to destroy the ‘Jewish State’, has been propagated in all sectors of the Israeli society, especially in its school system, military boot camps, and media. As it will be proven below, this myth was deemed necessary by most Zionists to legitimize their continued USURPATION of the Palestinian people’s political, civil, and economic rights.....
Elder Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Gordon, not only did I say that Mr. Abourezk supports terrorists, I quoted the transcript and gave the URL of the video where he calls Hamas “resistance fighters” rather than the far more accurate “terrorists.”

If quoting Mr. Abourezk and inviting people to watch the video that he made for Hezbollah TV is considered a “smear tactic,” then I must be guilty.

Atheo, you are correct in that the Arab armies in 1948 were poorly organized with the exception of the Transjordanian Arab Legion. That has no bearing whatsoever on the Arab desire to utterly destroy Israel, which is incontrovertible.

But if you doubt it, here’s a quote from May 15, 1948, when the Arab League Secretary General Abdul Razek Azzam Pasha announced the intention to wage “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

If you need a few dozen other quotes from Arab leaders determined to not only destroy Israel but also to wipe out any vestiges of Jews from the area, just ask. I’ll be happy to educate you, as well as Mr. Abourezk, if he is still lurking about.

James Abourezk Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
For anyone who is interested in following up on how Israel created itself as a state, please allow me to recommend some books that will inform you.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe (an Israeli historian,who also enumertes the relative size of the opposing military).

Taking Sides, by Steven Green. (An American writer)

Any of Israeli historian Tom Segev’s books.

I believe these books, plus the Donald Neff Trilogy, can be ordered from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, www.middleeastbooks.com. That organization has an extensive book list, all of such books are at a discounted price. Donald Neff used to be Time Magazine’s Jerusalem correspondent until he quit time and began writing Middle East history.

One other point–The UN General Assembly passed a partition plan in 1947, but General Assembly votes are non-binding, unlike Security Council votes which are binding. Thus, the myth that the UN created Israel is just that–a myth. If such votes were binding, then Israel would be forced to obey the dozens of General Assembly votes passed since then that have favored Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, all of them ignored by Israel. There have also been dozens of Security Council votes criticizing Israel for committing war crimes, etc., all of which have been vetoed by the United States.

Ilan Pappe’s book on ethnic cleansing is particularly shocking to read. Pappe recounts the horrendous slaughter, accompanied by a campaign of fear by the Zionist armies and terror groups designed to drive the Palestinians out of Palestine in order to create a majority Jewish state.

Another book that may now be out of print is: Terror Out of Zion, by J. Bowyer Bell (St. Martin’s Press), which carefully details the terrorism wrought by Zionist terror groups, such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, was elected Israel’s Prime Minister in the 1970s, and Yitzak Shamir, one of the troika who led the Stern Gang, also was elected as Prime Minister of Israel.

I became friends with Nathan Yalin Mor, who was also one of the Troika running the Stern Gang, however, since he later had become a “peacenik,” opting for peace between
Jews and Arabs, he was sort of persona non grata in Washington, D.C. It was up to me to make appointments for him when he wanted to see someone in our government, as none of the Jewish groups would even speak to him. The tribulations of someone who wants peace are somewhat remarkable. I once asked him if the Stern Gang had sent letter bombs to British politicians in the 1940s, as Sir Christopher Mayhew told me that his secretary opened one and was injured by doing so. Nathan said, “yes, we sent lots of letter bombs.”

Elder Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I already addressed Ilan Pappe’s lack of interest in historical truth.

Yes, the Stern Gang engaged in terror. This is not news. What is manifestly a lie is the idea that the Zionists engaged in “ethnic cleansing,” a reprehensible slander that is shown to be false by the simple fact that there are 1.2 million Arabs living in Israel today. If anyone should be accused of “ethnic cleansing” it would be the Arab world that expelled nearly every Jew in the years following 1948. The Old City of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria became literally Judenrein under “moderate” Jordanian rule - not a single Jew was left in those areas, and every single synagogue in the Old City was demolished within days of Jordanian control in 1948.

Other Arab atrocities that Mr. Abourezk wants to sweep under the rug started in 1886 with the first Arab attacks on a Jewish settlement, and they escalated in 1921, 1929 with the horrendous massacres in Hebron and elsewhere (ancient Jewish communities that had lived in Palestine for centuries), the 1936-39 reign of terror where thousands were killed including from Arab infighting, and no shortage of Arab massacres of Jewish civilians in 1947-48 including Hadassah Hospital.

I have spent much time reading contemporaneous accounts of the events in newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s and the Zionists (at least the ones that wrote for the Palestine Post) consistently wanted to live in peace with their Arab neighbors. The archives are online so if you want to find counterexamples, feel free. Yes, not every single Jew acted in an exemplary manner - real life doesn’t allow such neat categorizations - but the vast majority of Zionists considered the terror attacks from Irgun and Stern to be outrageous and did not celebrate them, as too many Arabs have been wont to do whenever Jews or Westerners are murdered.

In other words, Abourezk is cherry-picking the facts that fit his agenda and is not only ignoring the rich history of Arab terror that continues on to this day, he appears to embrace it when the perpetrators are Hamas and Hezbollah (we unfortunately do not have a record of his opinion of Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Al Aqsa Brigades, or any of dozens of other groups.) Israel has time and time again offered real concessions for real peace and it has been rejected by the Arabs, and very often the people who suffer most are the very Palestinians that the Arabs pretend to care so much about.

For more details about the history of the entire Palestinian Arab people - and I am far more sympathetic to them than you might think, although their leaders have been atrocious for decades - I have been writing a series of postings about them. Check out http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychological-history-of-palestinian.html

And if you find any mistakes, please let me know. Unlike some people, I really do care about the truth.

September 17, 1937: The Samaria Challenge Cup

Seventy years ago, the British played their third annual polo tournament between the Jerusalem team and the Nablus team:

Isn't it interesting that in 1937 that section of Palestine was not called "the West Bank" but "Samaria"?

And this is what the British called it, not only the Jews.