Woodrow Wilson, when he addressed Congress urging it to commence hostilities with Germany, declared that the war would “make the world safe for democracy.” Apparently, the pro-Israel neocons at the Shalem Center are engaging in a war of a different sort.
Concerned that Israeli universities are a hotbed of Israel-hatred and unwilling to develop a ideological cadre of sufficiently pro-Israel students, the Center has applied to the Israeli educational authority for approval to launch its own rightist undergraduate program, Shalem College:
The Shalem Center, a conservative-right wing research institute…initiated the establishment of an elite college for the humanities. Last week, the Shalem Center filed an application with the Council for Higher Education in Israel for the opening of an institution of higher learning that would be authorized to grant B.A. degrees in liberal arts. The academic degree would be a multi-disciplinary program in the humanities and economics, and sources familiar with the initiative described the teaching staff as “representing the entire political spectrum of Zionism.”
“The entire spectrum of Zionism?” Really. What they really mean is they’ll represent the “entire spectrum” of pro-Israel thought. Anyone insufficiently ideologically pure need not apply. Why would any student interested in Zionism not want to study non- or anti-Zionist thinkers? Wouldn’t you think you’d want to learn what critics of Zionism have written so you could develop your own critical thinking on the subject?
Here is a passage from the College’s mission statement:
Shalem College is designed to be a long-term investment aimed at bringing about a strategic change in the position of the Jewish state and the Jewish people as a whole. Our goal is the establishment of an elite institution of higher education that will serve as a “College of the Jewish People,” a college which will be devoted to nurturing an entirely different kind of Israeli and Jewish leadership…
Though the College manifesto compares itself to Ivy League schools like Princeton, it is closer in elitist ambition to Milton Friedman’s University of Chicago especially the more right-wing of its programs like economics.
Though the College’s website is extremely careful about disguising its ideological prejudices, you can glimpse them here:
Expanded attention to Western texts and traditions that permit a more fruitful dialogue with Jewish tradition. The college will relate to a wider selection of Western traditions than has become fashionable in many leading universities, including: treatment of the tradition of Western nation states as a legitimate alternative to expressly internationalist goals and values…
Calling it Shalem College is much too prosaic. Since undoubtedly they’ve tapped their major funder, Shelly Adelson (I guess he’s not entirely bankrupt yet), they could call it the Adelson School for Right-Thinking Pro-Israel Zionists. And since I find it hard to believe there will be students breaking down the door to enroll, they might have to ask Shelly to pay them to do so. That would be an interesting reversal of the traditional college relationship in which students generally pay for the education they receive.
Let’s take a look at the faculty who will represent the “entire spectrum of Zionism:”
One characteristic of the lecturers listed as the college’s founders is that they are all known to be highly critical of the ‘leftist’ academia and ‘leftist’ intellectual approaches, such as those of post-colonialism and post-modernism. Among the narrow list of lecturers intended to be part of the institution are Professor Yoav Gelber, a historian who opposes the ‘new historians’ in Israel; Dr. Martin Kramer, who wrote many books and articles against the influence of Edward Said; and Professor Yosef Gorni, a historian of the Labor movement and a well known critic of post-Zionism in Israeli academia.
“The idea is to create an elite institution in the humanities and social sciences,” Professor Gelber, who currently teaches at the University of Haifa, said on Friday. “I look at the condition of humanities in the universities and the situation is very bad. Humanities are in crisis.”
The post-modern inclinations in academia are a main reason for the drop in the popularity of humanities, according to Gelber. “They teach all the post-modern silliness, and therefore no one is interested in it. If you are talking about a drop in the standing of humanities, then this is also part of it.”
Actually, I think they’re missing a few necessary faculty additions: David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes and Norman Podhoretz really must be included to attain a balanced ideological spectrum running from the mere right to the beyond-Pluto right.
The academic mission of this institution seems a pipe dream:
The plan is for a select group of candidates to be accepted to the college every year – ‘cream of society’ is how those behind the project describe the future students, who are intended to serve as the future leaders in business, governance and social initiatives. Students will be selected on the basis of their exams, intellectual capabilities and motivation to influence.
In other words, they’re attempting to create an academic version of Aipac. The ambition is breathtaking, astonishing and foolhardy beyond belief. Though they certainly will receive accreditation from the current rightist government.
We should keep our eyes open for announcements about which academic propagandists have accepted positions at this new Zionist indoctrination program.
By the way, there are two words you will never see in this institution’s website or curriculum (unless it’s in a derisive context): Arab and Islam. They will introduce their students to western civilization and its great books. Ditto for Jewish tradition. But not a word will be spoken about Islam or Arab civilization–at least if you can believe the website. This will be an interesting stretch when they have to study Jewish civilization in medieval Spain, since the cross-fertilization between the two cultures was extensive and you can’t understand Jewish Spain without understanding Moorish Spain. And how will they approach Rambam, a product of such cultural co-mingling who served an Egyptian caliph as court physician and wrote in Judeo-Arabic?
I suppose they could somehow erase any Jewish interaction with Arab culture and Islam. It would be quite a feat, but certainly not beyond someone of the academic skills of Martin Kramer.
Great commentary Richard, thank you.
I think the most telling part of the passage you quoted on ideological prejudices is actually at the end:
If one knows what conclusions one wants to find then it is probably best not to look too closely at any evidence that might challenge ones own prejudices.
Ah, Richard, what else should you expect from the Shalem Center which brags as its director Natan Sharansky? And what the hell, there are all kinds of religious schools which indoctrinate their students with political dogma – Bob Jones University, the Mormon colleges, the Jesuit schools, Wahabbis, etc. But I agree with you, it’s sad to see this in a Jewish environment which has a tradition of openness: Brandeis University, for example. This is just another sign of our times of dumbing down education for political control. Alas.
I can hardly believe they will create an ideologically blinkered elite there. Those they manage to indoctrinate will not belong to the elite, and the elite will not be indoctrinated.
Richard,
Thanks for this info. Shalem Center are creeps whose main audience is outside of Israel. They are hardly known and not much respected inside the country.
Yet, I would like to suggest that you refrain from using “pro-Israel” in the way that you do. You are playing right into the hands of AIPAC.
These creeps are not pro-Israel by any meaningful sense. They are pro-Occupation, anti-Arab or just plain neocon or a mixture of them all. When all else fail, use “pro-Israeli-regime”, or “pro-Israeli-government” this would be a more apt description.
The fact that a whole people has been tricked, hijacked and manipulated into complicity with these outrages, still does not allow the criminals to pose themselves as speaking for the general interest.
Having been a participant in the non-accredited fellowship program there in 2001-2, I can say that Shalem–besides the Hazony/Oren/Kramer/Netanyahu supposedly “neo-con” axis–also attempts to resurrect the old-school Liberalism of Hayek and Jabotinsky, and puts forward a pro-Zionist view articulated by such scholars as Gelber, Gavison, Kasher, and Gorni, in a country whose academe is dominated by the left-of-Meretz anti-Zionists of Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University.
That the non-Zionist Left that dominates the public institutions and public discourse would regard them as marginal and unimportant is unsurprising, especially since liberal nationalism is considered an oxymoron by the bien-pensant Israeli academic elite. Obviously, the Zionist Right is supposed to be denied any public forum, because Zionism is an illiberal nationalism. The fact is that 19th century Central European liberal thought is alien to the Balad-influenced Hadash-Arab élite, which might be characterized as Ba’athist rather than Kantian, despite Azmi Bishara’s Ph.D. in philosophy from Humboldt Univ. That the participants will be forced to meditate on Zionism’s potential deviation from liberal nationalism and explore the basis for a liberal-nationalist state in the modern world, and justify the nation-state tout court, can only strengthen Jewish peoplehood.
Omigod, are you off your nut. Tell us just who are these anti-Zionists at Hebrew U. & Tel Aviv U.? Do tell.
Did you get yr talking points from Bill Kristol, David Horowitz, NPAC & the Bushite neocons? This is precisely the jargon they use too in talking about U.S. academe. They’re just as paranoid & clueless as you too.
Who said that anyone regards the Shalem Center as marginal or unimportant? Why did you think I wrote this post? Because I think the developments I’ve criticized are marginal & unimportant?
Oh please. Are you forgetting Bar Ilan? And Bar Ilan is far more prestigious than Shalem College will ever be.
Ah yes, it’s because those nasty Arabs are all primitive thugs incapable of thinking as polished western liberals do. Any more racist thoughts for us?
So you’re claiming that Israel’s foremost Arab political intellectual, trained at a classical German university in the tenets of western political philosophy is closer in outlook to Saddam Hussein than Immanuel Kant? Do you see how utterly ridiculous you are? No of course you don’t. But others will.
The terms ‘nationalism’ and ‘liberalism’ are not ones I use, and thus the meaning of what you have said is not clear to me. Would you explain what you mean by each, and together, please?
Eurosabra in what respects can Zionism be regarded as Kantian? Kant’s nineteenth century Jewish students saw a similarity between Kantian ethics and Jewish ethics exactly because both made a claim to universalism. The most important philosopher of the nineteenth century, who was both a Kantian and a Jew in a religious sense, Hermann Cohen, the founder of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, was therefore in principle opposed to Zionism. The gathering of the Jews in a nation-state in Palestine was a betrayal of the idea of the Jews as a ‘worldwide cultural nation’ (Brumlik) holding high the ideal of ethical universalism.
The folk at the Shalem Center seem to be in exact opposition to this.
Well I have to admit I’m rather jealous of all this. I’ve often bemoaned the lack of a Zionist-left equivalent to the Shalem Center (yes, there is stuff that is, in some way, close, but nothing with the level of their funding, and – let’s be frank – sophistication of presentation). I’ve talked about this lack with a number of people; perhaps this latest development should finally be the kick in the ass for it to finally happen.
Brand-
Hermann Cohen was also an ardent German nationalist, which he identified as being a “superior culture”. He supported German aggression in World War I, deluding himself, like many of the liberal German Jewish thinkers that the invasion of Belgium and France was a “defensive act”.
Regarding the Shalem Center, all I can do is quote Mao Zedong (!) who once said “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend” (he later changed his mind, but that is a different story). Actually, they are beginning to have some influence. The great tragedy of the Menachem Begin years as leader of the Israeli “Right” is that he was not interested in developing the intellectual base of the Zionist-Nationalist-Right and so at one time, almost all the think tanks were identified with the Labor Party and the further Left. Netanyahu, as a son of a product of the intellectual Right which was ignored by Begin has taken in interest in supporting the Shalem Center. Another thing I think is very important is that the Center is publishing and republishing the works of Rav Eliezer Berkovits, an important Jewish thinker, who is one of the few thinkers to deal with the importance of Judaism as in fluence on the moral and ideological underpinnings of the Jewish state. The mainline Religious Zionist thinkers tended to ignore these questions and leave the ideological and moral base of the State to the Labor Zionists to fill, and with the crisis in values that this movement has encountered, a vacuum has developed that many view as endangering the very existence of the state due to the neglect of many social problems and leading to corruption among many of the political leaders of the State. In addition many in the Religious Zionist camp viewed their role as no more than “bringing a little Yiddishkeit” to the secular Zionist camp and they didn’t pay attention to what the Torah says about what the nature of a Jewish State should be. The Shalem Center is grappling with these questions and they are also very deeply involved in matters regarding the sometimes tense relationship between the religious and secular communities.
Regarding the RAMBAM and Muslim culture, while it is true that he respected many Muslim philosophers, he did not hold a high opinion of Islam as a religion and he did not view Muslims as being particularly tolerant. He himself was forced to flee Spain and then Morocco due to Muslim fanaticism under the Almohads. The so-called “Golden Age” in Spain (which didn’t last very long) had ended before the RAMBAM’s time. In fact, once the Christian Reconquista began, many Jews fled Muslim-controlled areas and found what proved to be temporary refuge in the Christian-controlled areas.
Anat Biletzki,Adi Ophir, Ariela Azoulay, Ofir Neuman, Ze’ev Sternhell, Moshe Zuckermann, Dafna Golan, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Yehuda Kupferman. I included only those who regard Zionism as “dead”, call for an alternate form of government, or for the demographic transformation of Israel into a non-Jewish polity. In other words, real anti-Zionists. A “critical” approach to Israeli history, politics, and society currently dominates the major universities, so that it might be easier to list Zionist faculty one-by-one. Either way, it’s a question that requires both time and subtlety and I’m deficient in both at present–I think it’s the heat.
I don’t really know how much of Kant survived at Humboldt in the DDR, since I arrived there in ’95. I suspect not much. And Bishara’s degree is from 1986, when the DDR was still an Unrechtstaat. The swanning about Syria praising Hezbollah strikes me as Bishara’s turning himself into a new Anton Sa’adeh, except that Ba’athism now rules Syria, so he doesn’t have to worry about Syrian treatment of dissidents.
Shalem’s innovation lies in its concern for the interaction between the Western world and Judaism, and more bluntly, the investigation Western European philosophical philosemitism of the Renaissance and Early Modern period, which Bar-Ilan doesn’t really do, the idea being to trace the roots of Western thought back to Judaism and (to a certain extent) re-inscribe Jews in the liberal west in an ur-political sense. Titles like “The Hebrew Roots of the Modern Republic” posit Hebrews as foundational of the modern West in ways that no one has previously considered. Whether that is a good idea is another issue entirely.
Crap again. Of the academics I know on your list, none are anti-Zionist. Let’s examine for example Zeev Sternhell since you name him. Provide a single passage fr. anything he’s written in which he calls himself anti-Zionist. If you can’t, then you’re a liar. I’m waiting for a reply. Your problem with him is that he is a vehement critic of the settlements & settler movement, which is a far cry fr. being anti-Zionist.
Geesh, someone who didn’t know much about Zionism might think you were actually a fair, balanced & thoughtful observer which you are NOT.
Now this is more like it. Any academic “critical” of the Zionist enterprise is anti-Zionist. That makes sense coming from a rightist like you. Unfortunately, it’s simply bogus demagoguery. I am a critical Zionist, but for you I’d be an anti-Zionist merely because I criticize the premises of Israeli policy & Zionist principles. That’s how limited yr perspective is.
I can’t speak to the issue of your time, but you’re certainly deficient in subtlety and accuracy.
And whether it is a distortion of the historical record is yet another.
Abdallah Laroui, _The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual_, Samir Kassir, _Being Arab_, Amin Maalouf _In the Name of Identity_. Arab liberal political theorists do better when they don’t have to face off against Zionism. _From the Jewishness of the State to Sharon_ is quite good, but too preoccupied with the elephant in the room, and, frankly, Bishara is in exile as an opponent of the State of Israel and a partisan of Syria.
That’s crap. Bishara is in exile as an opponent of the Shin Bet, not the state of Israel of which he remains a citizen. He is a partisan of an Israeli state the recognizes equal rights for all its citizens. Unfortunately, that makes him anathema to Israel’s rightist government and security apparatus which are threatened by uppity Arabs with PhDs from European universities who can argue rings around them (and you as well).
Richard,
Sternhell questions Zionism as “dead.” Someone who calls his nation’s founding ethos “myths” is not a supporter of the ideology that created it. A lot of ambiguity revolves around hard critics of the State of Israel who are still not willing to come out explicitly against Zionism, as (for example) Meron Benvenisti did. (Note that Benvenisti’s argument is that it is untenable, not that it was intentionally evil.) I think that most of the critics on that list argue for a radically different State of Israel that, should their ideas come to fruition, would no longer be a Jewish state in any meaningful sense of the term, including having a significant Jewish cultural content or population. Biletzki argues for the Palestinian Right of Return, which is not really consonant with the retention of a Jewish population until such time as Palestinian resistance groups become a lot less militant. You can decide whether or not that is a good thing according to your own values. At that point we are arguing about the potential consequences of a million hypotheticals, so, yes, from your reading, I should restrict the anti-Zionist label to people abroad like Gilad Atzmon, Gabriel Piterberg, Uri Davis, and Ilan Pappé, who really DO regard Medinat Israel as a mistake and nothing else. The question is whether people whose views once implemented would conceivably result in a revolutionary transformation of Israel incompatible with Zionism should be counted as anti-Zionists, I count them as such and you don’t.
Bishara is a gadfly who may or may not have done the things he is accused of, in any case the Israeli political scene, even Balad, seems to be doing without him. However, he chose to yank the chain of a fairly paranoid state in the worst way–he’s no Emil Habibi–and if the State has enough evidence to put him in jail, it should go get him. (And adjudicate everything, however clumsily, as with Ra’ed Salah.) The current ambiguity, however, serves everyone’s cynical interests too well–if guilty, Bishara gets to be a martyr instead of a crook, the State sidelines him without having to make its case, and a rising political generation gets to treat him as deadwood in Cairo. It’s the internationalization of the question that makes him a specific threat, and (honestly) he went farther than even the most passively non-compliant Syrian Golanis. Perhaps even breaking the laws on contact with a hostile power, but we’ll probably never know.
When you consider what happened to Kassir, it is at least heartening that Salah fought back somewhat successfully in court and that Bishara fled an indictment, not an ambush. We are not at “no man, no problem” quite yet.
That’s a lie. You use quotation marks around the word “dead” but can you provide a single quotation in which Sternhell says anything remotely close to this? Or are you merely paraphrasing & distorting his alleged ideas for yr own partisan ideological convenience. Certainly Zionism as any nationalism has its “myths.” Is anyone who questions any national myth an enemy of that nation? Puh-leeze.
What is a “hard critic.” Your phraeology is completely vague & meaningless. But it’s good to see that you believe that “hard critics” are merely disguising their anti-Zionism. I suppose since I would be a considered a “hard critic” in yr book that I’d be one as well. And yes, we “hard critics” have a secret cabal that meets once a yr. in a secret room where they publish the Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zionism. If you’re very good I might send you an invitation to our next cabal.
Ah, so I see. Anyone who argues for a “radically different State of Israel” is ipso facto anti-Zionist. Now I understand you perfectly. And you make perfect [ly no] sense. Now, yr & my definition of what would make Israel “no longer a Jewish state in any meaningful sense of the term” are radically diff. For yr definition would require Jewish supremacism in order to be a meaningful Jewish state. Mine wouldn’t. There is no reason why Israel can’t be a homeland for two peoples whose rights are inscribed in a constitution designed to protect majority & minority. You see, I don’t need to trample on the rights of a minority in order to be able to fully exercise my own Jewish rights within Israel. You do. And that’s the (BIG) diff. bet. us.
More nonsense. I don’t know what Biletzi’s real views are & I wouldnt’ trust you to characterize them accurately. But even acknowleding a Right of Return (& there are many views of how this should be implemented & I don’t know which one he holds) does NOT by any means affect the “retention” of Jewish population.
Not only SHOULD you do so, to tar others underserving of the term with it is deceitful and a lie. Pls. don’t lie. Not here at least. And especially if I’m going to catch you out doing it.
You MAY NOT call someone an anti-Zionist who does not call themselves that. The fact that you label Israeli academics as anti-Zionists who are not indicates the impoverishment of yr definition of Zionism & has almost no reflection on their own views.
Even by Israeli law Bishara did not do anything he is accused of till it is proven in a court of law. Since the Shin Bet had ample opportunity before he left Israel to charge & try him & refused to do so, this indicates the strength of the case the security apparatus felt it had–which was no strength.
In the same sense that the U.S. political scene seemed to be doing w/o Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy after their removal fr. the political scene. Bishara’s removal fr. the scene impoverishes Israeli politics and a potential eventual rapprochement bet. Arabs & Jews.
Precisely. And they didn’t now did they?
Oh puh-leeze. Once again, no one has proven in a court of law that he broke any law despite as I mentioned ample opportunity to do so. Israeli Jews have also done little less than he did in visiting “hostile” states & not been prosecuted. The U.S. Speaker of the House visited Assad & neocons accused her of violating the Logan Act. Yet guess what happened? Nothing. As you say, this all results fr. an overly paranoid, defensive state that is frightened of the shadow of its “enemy” though it posseses multiple nuclear warheads.
Bar-Kochba, I asked Eurosabra what Zionism had to do with Kant? He hasn’t answered that question. Instead I get from you the remark that Cohen was a German nationalist who supported the German side during the First World War. What has that got to do with my question?
You also suggest that his attitude towards Germany (and, by implication, towards Zionism) was shared “by many of the liberal Jewish thinkers”.
This remark has amazed me, not because it is incorrect but because it comes from you.
You will recall that on Tony Karon’s blog, where you appear as Y.Ben-David, you contradicted, in its most recent thread, one of Tony’s remarks as follows:
“Your comment that “most Jews who were murdered by the Nazis had no interest in a Jewish state in Palestine” is unsubstantiated. Sure, had everything been great in Europe in the decades before the Holocaust, that might have been the case. But antisemitism was rampant throughout Europe to different degrees and almost all Jews were aware of it. … By the 1930’s Zionism was rapidly becoming the major force in European Jewry. ”
We subsequently had an exchange in which I drew heavily on Amos Elon, Paul Knepper and Stefan Zweig, to argue that, before the Nazi era, many German and Austrian Jews had a strong attachment to Germany respectively Austria. You tended to doubt that, coming up with incorrect information about the way their entrance to various professions was blocked. You argued, for instance, that it was almost impossible for Jews to get appointments as Professors “up until the end of the Kaiser’s regime in 1918”. I gave various contra-examples and ultimately quoted Karl Popper (at no.60) who said the exact opposite. But were you aware of the existence of Hermann Cohen and of all those other “liberal Jewish thinkers” then?
I had to remark on the same thread in another context (that of the support by the Arab states for the Palestinians) that your supply of “facts” seems to be determined by the stance you happen to take in a particular argument.
Anyway, about Cohen’s attitude in the First World War various points can be made. In the first place that German “war guilt” then was far less clear than in the Second World War (France had been longing for revenge ever since its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and its then loss of the Alsace). And, secondly, that to Cohen it was also very important that Germany was taking on Russia which was, for him, a hotbed of really serious anti-semitism and where he believed to see “undisguised measures for the extermination of the Jewish people”.
Incidentally, in my earlier post there is after the bit “most important philosopher of the 19th century” a comma that shouldn’t be there and that disguises the direct link with the limiting qualifications “Jewish” and “Neo-Kantian”.
Bar Kochba, as often, doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In fact, Gershom Scholem, product of a good German Jewish family and a Zionist as well, notes in his own writing how comfortable German Jews were in German society. 1/4 of German Jews converted to Christianity in the period between emancipation & the 1930s. Does that sound like they were Zionists & aware of the imminent danger of their destruction in an anti-Semitic onslaught?? Scholem may’ve been more sensitive to this possibility as a Zionist. But he concedes that most other German Jews weren’t.
We were talking about “European Jewry”. German Jewry wasw a small percentage of this. Yes, they (the German Jews) did feel at home there, although already during World War I, German Jews were starting to get uncomfortable with the “Jew Count” ordered in the German Army, the demand of Matthias Erzberger (who was a member of the Catholic Zentrum Party and was considered a “liberal”) to know how many Jews were involved in governmental positions during the war, the demand by Prussia to end the influx of Austrian Jews while the war was going on. Of course, as soon as the war ended the Kaiser blamed the Jews for the defeat and his ouster. So things weren’t so rosy there, either. But in the rest of Europe, in the East where the large Jewish masses were found, in Poland and Russia, the situation was very different.
Regarding the number of Jewish professors, I recall reading that it was difficult for Jews to get these positions. You cerntainly are aware of the number of Jews who converted to Christianity in order to get plum jobs (Otto Klemperer and Gustav Mahler come to mind).
Richard,
You do know that I get banned from most anti-Zionist blogs, right? Usually I say something contentious like the above, like that the consequences of someone’s advocacy of the Palestinian Right of Return will undo Zionism, someone calls me a liar, and requires me to quote chapter and verse, and gets huffy and bans me. I’m going to be very judicious here and simply restrict myself to elucidating any aspects of Israeli literature that come up, which is an area in which I can make a contribution I did address Shalem’s key aspect, which is their (our?) desire to re-inscribe Jews in the post-Biblical Western canon, while BK_132 touched on the republication of thinkers like Berkowitz, and (to my mind, more significant for Zionism) Eliezer Schweid. Again, a fruitful field of inquiry
Again, I really AM the type of rightist you love to hate, although I voted Hadash (aren’t we all bipolar?), the dilettante. The strange thing I have noticed is that centrist Zionists like David Myers are now looking at Diaspora right-of-Palestinian-Return proponents like Simon Rawidowicz in a sympathetic light, at the behest of people like Gabi Piterberg. Since (with Biletzki and Bishara) we differ on the consequences of hypotheticals, you can safely call for “evidence” and argue that the case is “not proven in a court of law”, and win the argument on yr. blog. By fleeing, Bishara has stymied the resolution of the case indefinitely, which apparently suits everyone just fine.
Again, I suffer from a bit of deformation professionelle in that my time as a MADA medic in Jerusalem has made me wade through too much blood and other fluids to make me really value the type of discourse-analysis argumentation of the type that Steven Plaut (go Steven!) and Yoram Hazony engage in, or Plaut’s long march through the courts vs. Neve Gordon (?) but I despise the type of thuggery that the less-articulate Right inflicted on Sternhell.
The current ascendancy of the Likud is interesting indeed, I hope for great things from Oren, who (besides being personable, articulate, and charming) has a deeper knowledge than he lets on, and an immunity to the sort of political mysticism practiced by Lieberman. I suspect/hope he can break through to a sort of Barak-like (“I would have become a terrorist”) empathy, or at least not work the Israel Lobby angle with Lieberman’s crudeness.
I’ve banned a lot of right-wing commenters here & don’t know what causes you to be banned elsewhere. But based on what you’ve written here so far, you haven’t come close to the edge. I disagree with your views, but you could say far worse than you have.
If you voted Hadash, then you’re certainly unorthodox, but of quite a diff. character than Bar Kochba and other rightist commenters here.
I’ve written very extensively about Bishara here & on this issue as well. My preference would have been for him to stay & fight the matter tooth & nail. But then again, he has serious health problems that require sophisticated care. Not wanting to die of liver failure in an Israeli prison is a perfectly reasonable reason to leave the country when faced with the possibility of rotting in jail for 10 or 20 yrs.
I will grant you that Oren is an unorthodox choice. But I see him as a partisan hackish ideologue with a working brain, which you can’t say for other rightist Israeli pols.
Bar Kochba, I made it very clear that I was talking about West European Jewry, more specifically German Jewry.
You never provide any sources for the factual claims you come up with and I am inclined to think that you make things up as you go along. You were quite sure, for instance, about those professorial appointments and now you say rather vaguely “I recall reading…”
As far as Otto Klemperer is concerned I have pointed out before that he led two major orchestras before he got converted to catholicism but you have ignored that and just go on claiming the same old things.
You have obviously no idea of the extent to which German Jewry identified with Germany. Sander Gilman and Jack Zipes say in their introduction to the Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture 1096 – 1996: “Today, more than fifty years after the end of the Shoah, it is apparent that Jewish writers never stopped writing in German, even during the 1930s and 1940s, and that they continued to refer to a German cultural tradition, contesting and claiming this culture as part of their own identity”. Reflect on that, if you can.