Friday, January 13, 2012

Just How Risky Is It To "Criticize" Israel?

In Haaretz, James Kirchik describes what he suggests may be A case of leftist 'McCarthyism'.

In addressing the ease with which accusations of "Israel firster" and "dual loyalty" are now be tossed around by the left, Kirchik notes a parallel problem:
The left is constantly complaining that the debate about Israel is restricted, that one can't criticize Israel without "risking" his career. Reality is in fact the opposite. Figures ranging from University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer to journalists Peter Beinart and Andrew Sullivan have all seen their careers blossom as a result of their harsh and unrelenting criticism of Israel. Indeed, obsessively attacking Israel is a bona-fide way to resuscitate one's career, not destroy it. As a measure, consider the fact that employees at mainstream liberal institutions feel comfortable using the sort of language popularized by white supremacists and Holocaust-deniers.

It isn't just figures on the medium and lower rungs of think tanks using such foul rhetoric: "Israel-firster" and "Likudnik" are favorites of Time's Joe Klein, as well as Salon's Glenn Greenwald, one of America's most popular liberal bloggers, who refers to "the many Israel-firsters in the U.S. Congress."
Read the whole thing.

I don't know if attacking Israel in public has actually helped the reputations of these people--though who ever heard of Mearsheimer and Walt before "The Israel Lobby"--but it does seem they never stop patting themselves on the back for their bravery for being among the first to broach this "forbidden" subject.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahem...Walt and Mersheimer still made sure they were tenured before authoring their 2006 exposé of the Lobby. As for Sullivan, he was part of the neocon pro-war crowd as early as 2002...

Contrast this with the treatment that has befallen Norman Finkelstein at DePaul...

Daled Amos said...

Treatment of Finkelstein?

This is from the statement DePaul released (http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/843):

"Throughout the tenure process, our faculty ensured that the established standards for tenure were their only consideration. Upon receiving the recommendations from the lower level faculty committees, the University Board on Promotion and Tenure – DePaul’s highest academic committee – voted to deny Professor Finkelstein tenure, and the President of DePaul accepted that vote. We understand that Professor Finkelstein and his supporters disagree with the University Board on Promotion and Tenure’s conclusion that he did not meet the requirements for tenure. The system is designed to give every applicant the same opportunity to achieve tenure, and has proven to be fair and effective. In every tenure case, the final decision is one of balancing the various arguments for and against tenure.

Professor Finkelstein has expressed the view that he should have been granted tenure and that third parties external to the University influenced DePaul in denying tenure. That is not so. Over the past several months, there has been considerable outside interest about the tenure decision. This attention was unwelcome and inappropriate. In the end, however, it had absolutely no impact on either the process or the final outcome."

Perhaps DePaul had the following in mind as part of their decision (http://www.catholicleague.org/depaul-professor-defames-catholic-education-donohue-defends-dershowitz/):

“Catholics have every right to expect that Catholic colleges and universities are free from bigotry of any kind. Unfortunately, a recent ugly incident by DePaul professor Norman G. Finkelstein has betrayed that trust. To be specific, an online column he wrote at indybay.org suggesting that Alan Dershowitz be assassinated, coupled with an obscene depiction of the Harvard professor, is cause for alarm.

“Finkelstein has every right to quarrel with Dershowitz’s proud defense of Israel’s right to exist, but when he compares him to a Nazi (this despicable charge is made twice), then elementary standards of civility have been shattered. Similarly, calling Dershowitz a ‘moral pervert’ who ‘missed the climactic scene of his little peep show’ is the language used by street propagandists, not academicians. Make no mistake about it, Finkelstein wrote this to illustrate the vicious cartoon he commissioned: Dershowitz is depicted masturbating in glee over dead Lebanese civilians. It doesn’t get much lower than this.

“There are plenty of arenas in and around Chicago where those who want to rant can go to express themselves, but a university is not such a venue: the university exists so that the truth may be pursued. That is what a liberal arts education is expected to provide, and it is nothing but a travesty when the rights afforded faculty members are abused in the way Finkelstein has done. This is doubly true when it happens on a Catholic campus.

“The time has come for responsible Catholic leaders to hold up a stop sign to this kind of ad hominem assault. Robust free speech should be welcomed on campus, but if it is to have pedagogical value, it must respect logic and standards of evidence. Character assassination of the kind Finkelstein engages in does not meet that test. He has abused his rights as a faculty member and he has defamed Catholic education.”"

In any case, you don't have to come to issues of an "Israeli Lobby" or external pressure to see why DePaul may have thought better than to give Finkelstein tenure.

Empress Trudy said...

Ah yes, we control all media which is against us. We control all banks so we need endless handouts. And we control all governments who are opposed to us and wish us dead.