We both thought that the pseudonymous Haber had made an unintentional mistake in his diction.

Now I know that Haber was just making a funny. There, I just ueed a neologism too: “Funny” as a noun.

But let me get back to the “disinvitement” brouhaha for just a moment. Jerry states above that “disinvitement” was not a “mistake” but a deliberate coining on his part; in my book, he has creative license to do this, whether the language prescriptivists out there like it or not.

This thread has provided additional information which suggests that the pseudonymous Haber is real, even if other pseudonymous bloggers are often fictional characters.

What I found initially bizarre about the pseudonymous Haber was his insistance that there was no reason for Palestinians to give up the demand to settle descendants of Palestinian refugees inside of Israel, combined with a demand that Israel allow 300,000 in and a statement that if the Palestinians resume the intifada (did it end?) then he is not in a position to tell them how to resist oppression.

It certainly sounded as if he accepted that Hamas, Fatah et al would attack Israeli civilians if Israel refuses to allow Palestinians to settle in Israel. I found those views peculiar, his language (”disinivitement”) peculiar and thought that perhaps he was not who he claimed to be. That is why I asked how and if you knew he was real.

I hope you’re not upset with me when I’ve written in and corrected your name misspellings. (I would never snivel over an ordinary typo, but I do think it’s important to spell names correctly for various reasons.)

Andy: No, of course not. It IS important to spell names right. Whose name did I misspell?

If you object to my sniping then stop your own.

Jonathan, it’s so much fun for a change to have other people sniping at ea. other rather than me. But as referee of this “fight” I remind you that it was you who sniped first. So you have no right to complain about anyone sniping back.

in the specific case of the pseudonymous Haber I think that he probably is, in fact, approximately who he claims to be, with perhaps a little puffery around the edges.

Not only are you insufferable. You are beyond insufferable. Prove a single instance in which Jerry has inflated (”puffery”) himself, his resume or anything else. I have no idea why you have a bee in yr bonnet about Jerry, a perfectly nice Ivy-educated Jewish boy. Your mania for this subject is a bit odd.

And btw, l’havdil elef havdalot btw. Jerry Haber and Holocaust deniers, 19 yr old VA. bloggers & whoever else Jonathan wants to dig up to prove you can’t trust anyone who uses a pseudonym.

These people indeed use stage names, but their real identities are known.

Jerry Haber’s identity IS known. Just not to you.

I could not, however, verify that the pseudonymous Haber has a doctorate or is a professor, even if I wanted to go to the trouble to do so (I don’t.)

But I can. Now you can trust my word of not. I couldn’t care less. I do find it amusing though that you claim you don’t want to verify that Jerry has a doctorate, yet you seem to want to bitch & moan on the subject endlessly.

But I’m guessing that even if Jerry revealed his identity to you you’d find something else to complain about.

UVA, December ‘87.

Both Mr. Silverstein and I interpreted the word “disinvitement” as being an error. If the pseudonymous Haber’s coinage of the term was tongue-in-cheek then great, but the putative humor of it escaped us and we both interpreted it as a mistake.

The problem with pseudonyms on the web is that we get arguments from authority based on the say-so of the pseudonymous blogger, and we cannot know if the appeal to the blogger’s authority is valid.

Here in Virginia there was a blogger claiming to be a lawyer and pontificating on details of Virginia law. It turned out the kid was 19. I have dealt with a male UK Holocaust denier who claimed to be an American woman living in the California desert.

Online now there is a Swedish neo-Nazi whose son was evicted from Israel during an attempted visit, who calls himself “Yisroel Shamir” (not his birth or current legal name) and whose Swedish-hosted website says “Greetings From Jaffa, Israel!” This individual calls himself “Israel Shamir.”

There are all kinds of fakers and frauds blogging pseudonymously, and we are well advised to be suspicious of the claims of those who engage in this practice. Now in the specific case of the pseudonymous Haber I think that he probably is, in fact, approximately who he claims to be, with perhaps a little puffery around the edges.

But in the absence of the additional information provided on this blog I was right to be suspicious.

By the way, Sting = Gordon Summer and Bono = Paul Hewson. These people indeed use stage names, but their real identities are known. We don’t have to debate whether Summer and Hewson are real people. We know they are. If Hewson says that his father was Protestant and his mother was Catholic, we could if we wished to verify that.

I could not, however, verify that the pseudonymous Haber has a doctorate or is a professor, even if I wanted to go to the trouble to do so (I don’t.) It is a different situation.

As for Jerry’s “pseudonym”, let me play the Devil’s advocate here for a moment:

Perhaps “The Magnes Zionist” is not so much a “pseudonym” as it is a “stage name”, in much the same way that Bono and Sting are stage names - it adds a bit of mystique to what would otherwise be just a normal identity.

Finally, a word for Mr. Mark: I myself am a technical writer, and I often have a need to coin or use words that are not in the dictionary. One wonders where you got your Ph.D. if you were trained to think so inflexibly.

“”"What’s the deal about Finkelstein”"”

What’s the deal about Diskin? What’s the deal about Dershowitz?

That is what people do on the internet. They snipe at Diskin and Dershowitz…and Finkelstein and Massad. Everyone snipes at everyone else. If you object to my sniping then stop your own.

Thanks, Jonathan, for providing me with much needed comic relief. You may be interested to know that the university that conferred my doctorate monitors its alumni, and after coining the word “disinvitement” (a play on words on disinvestment), I received a note saying that I would receive 2 points on my post doctoral record. (If I get more than 10 points in a given decade, the phd is rescinded.) Since my phd is in the humanities from an Ivy League school, they are very concerned about their reputation, especially among rightwing Jews, who are smarting from the fact that their Middle East Studies program is so “obviously” anti-Israel. (He said, tongue-in-cheek)

As for pseudonyms…I have often thought “Jonathan Mark” may be a persona invented by Norman Finkelstein. He only pops on my blog when Finkelstein is mentioned, and then with a vengeance. What’s the deal about Finkelstein

Jerry Haber

There is aboslutely nothing wrong with being a pseudonymous blogger. It’s a very common phenomenon in the blog world & quite accepted. Since you’re so familiar with academia you might understand why a professor might want to blog w/o using his/her real name. There are numerous cases in which academic bloggers were denied tenure, denied an interview, denied a job because they wrote something in a blog that got them in hot water. Since Jerry is tenured–that part of it isn’t relevant. But the general principle of protecting oneself is relevant. Writing pseudonymously allows you to be freer than you might otherwise be in yr comments about any number of things including politics, academia, etc. And btw, a number of other readers, fellow academics & friends know Jerry’s real identity as well.

Pls. do give this a rest. While I like Jerry very much I feel awkward being put in a position of having to speak for him. Take it up w. him if you have any further problems.