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You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Pro-Israel Neocons Torpedo Juan Cole Appointment at Yale”.
Tags: academic-freedom, aipac, Alan Dershowitz, jewish-week, juan cole, neocon, pro-israel
“We should all be ashamed of what Scott Johnson at Powerline, who after all must have impeccable academic credentials in this field to have assaulted the qualifications of Cole”
I assume you are being sarcastsic here, since if Scott Johnson, or any of the other members of hte Powerlie lynch mob — have any credential whatsoever in the field of Midlde Eastern studies, they’ve done a pretty good job of hiding their lights under bushel baskets.
But you also seem to have misled your capition writer:
“Highly-credentialed Mideast specialist Scott Johnson of Powerline led charge against Juan Cole”
Unless he/she is also being funny — in an even dryer way.
“blog world itself is both diminished and assaulted when our blog peers are assaulted within their professional fields for the perfectly reasonable, though controversial things they may write.”
Juan Cole, the man who calls Israel “the most dangerous regime in the Middle East” is not perfectly reasonable, nor is he professional in his egregious conspiracy theories and polemics. Bloggers have every right, nay a duty, to expose the depths Juan Cole has plumbed and to expose him as an extremist and discreditable anti-semite (oh, no, cant call him that, have to use PC words like “anti-Zionist”).
You’re a blithering idiot to call Juan Cole either an anti-Semite or anti-Zionist. He is neither & I dare you to produce any statements by him that could reasonably be characterized as that.
I don’t know if I’d call Israel “the most dangerous regime in the ME” but it’s certainly in a dead heat with Iran. If after Lebanon, you don’t acknowledge the danger that Israel poses not only to the ME, but to itself, then you’re blind as a post when it comes to seeing the reality before your nose.
Juan Cole is an “extremist” because he criticizes Israel? Big deal. I’m a progressive Zionist & I criticize Israel too. Call me an anti-Zionist, I dare you. And then when you do, produce a shred of evidence for the calumny. Go ahead, I dare you.
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[...] on the basis of a vote of no confidence due to insufficient scholarship? you bet ~ know why? Pro-Israel Neocons Torpedo Juan Cole Appointment at Yale [...]
It troubles me that these days any thoughtful criticism of
Israeli policy, foreign or domestic, is pounced on by people who use the “Anti-Semitic” or “Anti-Zionist” labels to dismiss or discredit thoughtful discourse. The United States, it is said, provides various kinds of assistance including foreign aid and military equipment equal to about half of Israel’s gdp. However that may be, it is certainly a fact that Israel receives more from the United States in terms of direct and indirect aid than any other country, not, I suppose, including the war zones. Of course, the military component of the aid to Israel comes with restrictions governed by treaty agreements. There is evidence to suggest that Israel may have violated some provisions of these treaty agreements by the use of white phosphorous in the bombardment of the civilian population of Gaza shortly before President Obama took office.
Other Israeli policies, including those pointed out by President Carter in his book Palestine, Peace not Aparteid, seem to have a negative impact on the foreign relations of the United States. To the extent that Israeli policies might harm United States interests, and in view of the extreme generosity with which the United States, and its taxpayers, has always treated Israel, it does not seem unreasonable to engage in frank and open discussions of Israeli policies that might have an impact on the United States, or its citizens, like me, when we travel abroad.
Having recently visited Jerusalem and the vicinity myself, I saw with my own eyes things taking place that I found profoundly disturbing, but that were the direct result of official Israeli policy. Does this make me anti-Semitic?
I confess, I grow weary of the abusive use of accusations of racism as a means of silencing anyone who speaks out against Israeli policy. It really is time we get beyond this and confront the reality on the ground truthfully.
A recent book that helps explain United States policy in the Middle east is Dark Crusade, Christian Zionism and United States Foreign Policy by Dr Clifford A. Kiracofe