Less Blatant Thought Control

Zionists do not always use the sorts of intimidation and coercion that characterizes the cases of Rashid Khalidi, Juan Cole, Norman Finkelstein, Joseph Massad, Hamid Dabashi, Georges Saliba, Nadia Abu el Haj, Debbi Almontaser, et al. ad infinitum. 

 

Influencing Academic Discourse outside Jewish and Middle East Studies
Joachim Martillo - thorsprovoni@aol.com
December 13, 2006 (Repost to EAAZI blog because of current relevance)

I have attended many Israel advocacy sessions at Boston-area colleges, synagogues, Jewish community centers, a few churches and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies building on High St.  I have also joined the audiences at media update sessions that the Jewish Community Relations Council, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, Jewish student groups and other Jewish organizations hold throughout the area.  Like most Americans I am constantly bombarded by almost subliminal pro-Israel, Jewish nostalgic, and anti-Arab anti-Muslim propaganda or indoctrination in the movies or on TV.
 
I have a fairly good understanding how the organized Jewish community keeps individual American Jews on one page with Israel solidarity.  I also see how media gate-keeping works, and the influence of Hollywood over pop culture provides a straightforward explanation of longstanding pro-Israel anti-Arab anti-Muslim sentiments among the American population.
 
But how does this bias make its strength felt in academic disciplines subjected to rigorous scholarship where there are not so many biased Jewish scholars?  How does it get to countries less subject to Hollywood influence or where there are fewer Jews and whose media is not owned by large Jewish-dominated media companies.
 
The conference described at the end of this email suggests a mechanism.  Here is the short description.

A major international interdisciplinary conference on the histories and cultures of antisemitism in England, from the Middle Ages to the presentday. To be held at Birkbeck College, University of London, Bloomsbury, London: 9-11 July 2007.

At Harvard, I have heard talks sponsored by Jewish groups that implicitly or even explicitly have called for genocide against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, but when the issue of criticizing Israel or the behavior of such Jewish groups is raised, ethnic Ashkenazim at Harvard fling accusations of anti-Semitism in order to silence discussion.  I am extremely disgusted.  Such behavior is a synchronic attempt to control discourse.  Now we can watch an attempt to create a diachronic English narrative of anti-Semitism to manipulate whole academic disciplines, which relate to the history and culture of England but which normally would be rather distant from the conflict over Palestine.
 
The conference covers such an extremely broad period that one has to worry about some very illegitimate essentialist assumptions simply in the choice of topic.  If we focus on Shakespeare, whose play Shylock or The Merchant of Venice has been subjected to extensive analysis for anti-Semitism, we can get a sense of the reasonableness of the conference topic.

 

While there are various forms of Judeophobia throughout history, there simply is not a common intellectual current among them, and when I and most experts in the field use the term anti-Semitism, we mean the modern biological determinist, social Darwinist form of Judeophobia, which develops in the specific region of historic Poland in the context of modernization and economic competition and which spreads to Central Europe.

 

Wilhelm Marr, who was himself half-Jewish (German Jewish not ethnic Ashkenazi), created the term Antisemitismus in the 1870s to describe this form of obsession. Despite his anti-Jewish writings, it is not even clear whether he is anti-Semitic according to his own definition, for he only married Jewish women.  As sort of a counterpoint the eminent Zionist leader Nordau carried on a long-term affair with the infamous anti-Semite, Olga von Novikoff.  Nordau's writings on racial degeneracy, racial revival and eugenics were at least as influential among German Nazis as they were among Zionists. (If one lays Nordau's Entartung [Degeneracy] down beside Mein Kampf or Hitler's Table Talk, the similarity of ideas and phraseology is often quite striking.)
 
In any case, as complex as this phenomenon of anti-Semitism was, it certainly does not exist to any measurable extent today, and when people express hatred of Zionist colonizers and racist ethnic Ashkenazim that support the crimes of Zionist colonizers, such hate is not anti-Semitism despite the claims of a bigot like former Harvard President Lawrence Summers.  All decent Americans should hate Zionist colonizers and their Ashkenazi American supporters because the atrocities of Zionism are heinous, and they are carried out in the name of Israeli American alliance with the support of US tax dollars.

 

The accusation of anti-Semitism certainly does not apply the Merchant of Venice, which is at least as much a lambasting as it is a presentation of stereotypes.  It is an extremely complex work, and the attempt to control the discourse about the Merchant of Venice by certain groups of ethnic Ashkenazim reminds me somewhat of the reaction that the very same people tried to orchestrate against The Heartbreak Kid (original version directed by Elaine May), which was a movie written by Neil Simon, who is an ethnic Ashkenazi American stage, screen and TV writer sometimes described as the Shakespeare of modern America. The movie told the story of a Jewish newly wed, who while on his honeymoon falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a Midwestern non-Jewish banker. The director, producer, the actors and the production crew of The Heartbreak Kid were almost entirely ethnic Ashkenazi Americans, who wanted to explore certain stereotypes in Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi American society.  It was called the most anti-Semitic movie ever made, and it certainly was not.
 
Neil Simon's sin lies in rejecting the traditional ethnic Ashkenazi anti-Christian anti-Gentile and anti-Catholic polemic while the assault on Shakespeare is a transparent attempt to incorporate Shakespeare into the Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazi pogrom and persecution version of Jewish history. The accusations of anti-Semitism against Shakespeare are a sort of preventive strike to indict the greatest of all writers for anti-Semitism so that all non-Jews can be held suspect  and so that all criticism of Israel and its ethnic Ashkenazi supporters can be categorized as anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent.  I am as tired of this nonsense as I am of Lawrence Summers, Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse and Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz. The academic discourse about anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice is infra dig. and sub-scholarly.
 
Academic specialists are often so focused on their field that a program like this Birkbeck College conference, which provides a multidisciplinary approach to numerous fields that no single scholar can encompass within his research, can just indoctrinate a very large number scholars outside of Jewish and Middle East studies what to think about anti-Semitism, relations between Jews and non-Jews, and the debt that non-Jews owe Jews for the Holocaust.  It will generate numerous questionable scholarly papers that will then be cited in numerously scholarly works and become part of the general Western academic discourse heavily influenced or controlled by ethnic Ashkenazi racism or Zionist fanaticism.
 
If the reader doubts my take on this conference, just consider the lack of attention that Shakespeare scholars have paid to racial and religious stereotyping in Othello or The Moor of Venice in comparison with Shylock.  Throughout English history relations and interactions with Moors (the Elizabethan term for Arab) and Muslims have been far more consequential and generally far more violent or prejudiced than those with Jews of any ethnicity.  Othello shows nothing comparable to Shylock in terms of the lambasting of stereotypes that have pervaded English culture since Shakespeare's time to the present day.  Wouldn't it make a great deal more sense for Birbeck College to host a conference on Anti-Arabism and Anti-Islamism in English Culture -- especially when the Blair government has been so willing to fall into lockstep with the fanatic anti-Arab anti-Muslim (very often Jewish/ethnic Ashkenazi) racists that dominate the US government?

Here is the original announcement.

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0982  Sunday, 5 November 2006

 

From:         Carol Barton <cbartonphd@earthlink.net>
Date:         Saturday, 4 Nov 2006 17:10:47 -0500
Subject:     Call for Papers: Antisemitism and English Culture

 

This is a cross-posting from H-Albion, in case anyone is interested in
participating in behalf of Will and Kit: if so, please answer Dr. Bale
(a.bale@bbk.ac.uk), not me.

 

Best to all,
Carol Barton

 

Call for Papers: Antisemitism and English Culture
Location: United Kingdom
Conference Date: 2007-07-09
Date Submitted: 2006-10-27
Announcement ID: 153477

 

Website: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/conf/antisemitism/

 

A major international interdisciplinary conference on the histories and
cultures of antisemitism in England, from the Middle Ages to the present
day. To be held at Birkbeck College, University of London, Bloomsbury,
London: 9-11 July 2007.

 

Plenary speakers:
Anthony Julius (Birkbeck College/London Consortium, University of London)
Miri Rubin (Queen Mary, University of London)
Ira Katznelson (Columbia University)

 

Key questions to be addressed include:

 

Can we talk of a distinctly English kind of antisemitism?

 

Is antisemitism inherent in Englishness?

 

What is, or has been, the relationship between 'high' or intellectual
English culture and antisemitism?

 

How far can specific English contexts be seen to have engendered
antisemitism?

 

Is there a meaningful history of English philosemitism, and what is its
relationship to antisemitism?

 

In what ways is England's antisemitic past reflected in the present?

 

What is the relationship between English antisemitism and communism,
socialism, fascism, Zionism, Islamism, secularism, liberalism, and other
ideologies?

 

How is antisemitism mediated in English art, literature and other
cultural forms?

 

What are the contours of continuity and transformation in English
antisemitism?

 

To what extent have the terms 'antisemitism' and 'Englishness' become
redundant? How much use do they retain?

 

Papers from all disciplines, or interdisciplinary submissions, are
welcomed; panel proposals of 3 speakers are also welcomed. Papers will
be of 20 minutes duration. Paper proposals of no more than 150 words
should be sent as soon as possible and by 15 December 2006 to Dr Anthony
Bale (a.bale@bbk.ac.uk), School of English & Humanities, Birkbeck
College, University of London, Malet Street, LONDON, WC1E 7HX, England.

 

Website: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/conf/antisemitism/

 

The Conference is organised in association with the Jewish Museum,
Camden Town, London.

 

Dr Anthony Bale
School of English
Birkbeck College
Malet Street
Bloomsbury
LONDON WC1E 7HX
United Kingdom
Email: a.bale @ bbk.ac.uk

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[Short Version] Tutu addresses Sabeel Conference

Abridgement by Karin Friedemann

October 27, 2007, Boston, MA --  At the behest of Nancy Kaufman of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and under the leadership of Hillel Stavis of the David Project, which is an Israel advocacy group, Boston-area Zionists stationed themselves on the corner next to Old South Church in order to protest  the Conference that the Palestine Christian Sabeel organized called together to discuss "The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine/Israel: Issues of Justice and Equality."

Despite inclement weather, a far larger audience attended the conference than was expected, and far fewer stuffed grape leaf wraps were available for lunch than the number of hungry attendees.

After the audience sang "Happy Birthday" to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Laureate gave the keynote speech.

Tutu first discussed the slander to which President Rev. Dennis Dease of the University of St. Thomas subjected him. Although Tutu was grateful for the gracious apology and for the invitation to come to speak, he reiterated his unwillingness to visit the University before it reinstated Professor Cris Toffolo to her position as director of the University's peace and justice studies program with her personnel file cleared of all criticism related to the incident.

Next, the Archbishop observed the similarity of the seizure of Palestinian property and forced relocation of the native Palestinian population to squalid refugee camps in 1947-8 to the seizure of property and forced relocation of the non-white population of Capetown to squalid ghettoes at the beginning of the 20th century. The Archbishop remarked that Palestinians were subjected to forms of oppression that non-whites had never experienced in South Africa.

Then, Desmond Tutu discussed several Bible passages in order to demonstrate that God demands justice and that therefore Palestinians have the right to justice. He asserted, "When you uphold an unjust dispensation it corrodes your humanity."

Overall Desmond Tutu sent an extremely mixed message. Tutu claimed to support justice for Palestinians even as he advocated a two-state solution that unjustly sacrifices Palestinian property rights to illegitimate Zionist claims. Tutu confused modern Ashkenazi Jews, who have no ancestral ties whatsoever in Palestine, with the  Judeans and Galileans of Jesus' time period.

At the conclusion of the Archbishop's address, the conference organizers requested that the audience not engage the protesters as it departed for the rally in Copley Square, where peace marchers circled the Square to express solidarity with the Sabeel Conference. 

In Copley Square, American Jews tried to intimidate two women in hijab into expressing support for Israel.

 

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Issues and Questions In the Historiography of Pre-State Zionism

The Failure of Jewish Studies in America

by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

 

I put up the lecture entitled Issues and Questions In the Historiography of Pre-State Zionism at http://www.eaazi.org/ThorsProvoni/history/naaplecture.htm . It does not address the distortion of the history of the Holocaust and of the Soviet Union in connection with Zionist historiography, but the material contained in this document is a useful starting point for understanding the Zionist indoctrination of Americans.

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Another Take on David Horowitz

David Horowitz' Islamophobia Unites the Ummah 

By Karin Friedemann

ccun.org, October 26, 2007

I was surprised and delighted to find that David Horowitz managed to do what no one else could ever do - get every major Islamic and Arab association and every personal opinion of every Muslim as well as anyone even remotely progressive on the same page as each other - united against "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," united against his Judeo-Supremacist hate campaign.

David Horowitz has moved the boundary of rational discourse on Islam and Arabic politics so far to the right that previously unacceptable Islamophobia and Arabophobia became acceptable or even moderate positions in American public discourse. Juan Cole has identified Horowitz as a pioneer of the "google-smear" method of discrediting a political opponent where lies "can be passed around to journalists and politicians as though they were actual information."

I have to disagree with the mainstream Muslim organizations that "dawah" or "explaining Islam" is the best method of counter-attack against the liar pundits who are using Muslims as scapegoats to distract from the wars the neo-conservatives are forcing America to wage, pay for and die for. For every lying sentence someone like Dershowitz or Horowitz might say, it would take an hour to unravel all the falsehoods and racist misconceptions. This is the neo-con method of argumentation. They are not trying to understand Muslims or help Muslims, they are trying to defeat Muslims politically and socially. It is therefore necessary to use normal political debate tactics to gain the upper hand. There is no evidence that dawah will likely solve the problem of the David Horowitz's of the world. They have more money and more media connections and they can do what they want. A more useful approach is to work on discrediting them by talking about THEM. Not by insisting we don't support terrorists. They are trying to wedge you into a corner and force you to say that you support Israel's right to murder Palestinians and take their property and sell it for subsidized rates to American Jews at discounts funded by our tax dollars.

The important thing to point out is that pro-Israel fanatics are disloyal to America and that they are traitors. David Horowitz in his FrontPage newsletter openly supported putting Prof. Sami Al-Arian in prison on secret evidence (read: no charges) and he wants all Muslims deported. He also wants Muslims to be imprisoned. He uses the very 1980's topic of "female circumcision" as a debate tactic when the real question is why are innocent women giving birth to babies on floors covered in shit and why are they being raped and sodomized by US soldiers in Guantanamo? Whose idea was that?

David Horowitz, like most pro-Israel Jews in America, wanted very much for the US to invade Iraq and imprison its population and murder the children. He is also strongly supportive of bombing Iran for no good reason except for his seething hatred against the United States. The neo-cons want to end the era of the American Constitution. David Horowitz supports trials without evidence, without charges, Muslims being locked up for life and tortured like Jose Padilla, who was given so much LSD he lost his mind and was unable to speak for himself at his own trial.

David Horowitz is part of a network of well-funded Jewish think tanks whose goal is to enslave the American population so that we will eternally subsidize the Israeli economy, send our children to die fighting Israel's enemies both real and imagined, and to give up our sovereignty.

I think it's really great that the Muslims and Arabs have united against David Horowitz's hate campaign. But what people still don't understand is that the anti-Islam speech is just a circus show. What this clown is advocating is the end of the United States Constitution. The end of civil liberties. The end of human rights. He advocates everything that Israel stands for. He wills the destruction of the American economy and our very moral fabric. Look at what frontpagemag.com wrote about Prof. Sami-Al Arian, about mosques around the country. He wants every person who is loyal to the ideals of the United States to rot in prison.

 

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Boston Sabeel Conference Keynote Address

Zionists Oppose Justice
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

October 27, 2007, Boston, MA -- Boston Zionists at the behest of Nancy Kaufman of the Jewish Community Relations Council and under the leadership of Hillel Stavis of the David Project, which is a Boston Israel advocacy and anti-Arab anti-Muslim hate group, stationed themselves in front of the Boston Public Library and on the corner next to Old South Church in order to protest the Sabeel Conference entitled "The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine/Israel: Issues of Justice and Equality."

Despite inclement weather, a far larger audience attended than was expected, and far fewer lunches, which consisted of wraps of stuffed grape leaves and other foods, were available than the number of attendees.

From 1:30 until 2:20, after Bishop Tom Shaw and Archbishop Michael Peers introduced him and after the audience sang "Happy Birthday" to him, Nobel Laureate and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave the keynote speech. Desmond Tutu first discussed the slander to which he was subjected by President Rev. Dennis Dease of the University of St. Thomas. Although Tutu was grateful for the gracious apology and for the invitation to come to speak, he reiterated his unwillingness to visit the University before it reinstated Professor Cris Toffolo to her position as director of the University's peace and justice studies program with her personnel file cleared of all criticism related to the incident.

Next, the Archbishop briefly compared Apartheid and the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian territories. He observed the similarity of the seizure of Palestinian property and forced relocation of the native Palestinian population to squalid refugee camps in 1947 to the seizure of property and forced relocation of the non-white population of Capetown to squalid ghettoes at the beginning of the 20th century. The Archbishop remarked that Palestinians were subjected to forms of oppression that non-whites had never experienced in South Africa.

Then, apparently under the false assumption that Zionism draws its inspiration from Jewish religion, Desmond Tutu advocated reconciliation between Israeli Zionists and Palestinians by quoting Leviticus 19:2: "Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" and referred to other passages from Leviticus and Deuteronomy like Leviticus 19:9-10:

9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field to its very border, neither shall you gather the gleaning after your harvest. 10 And you shall not strip you vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

He also discussed David's sin against Uriah the Hittite as well as murder of Naboth by Jezebel with the connivance of Ahab in order to demonstrate that God demands justice and that therefore Palestinians have the right to justice within the framework of the two state solution.

Such arguments are probably much more effective with Christians than with American Jews because Jews generally consider Christianity a false religion and usually view Christian clergy as Jew-haters, who are especially hypocritical when they make sermons to Jews on morality. For the most part American Jews long ago abandoned worship of God, and the vast majority of them express their yiddishkeyt (Jewishness) via ethnic narcissism, Holocaust obsession and worship of the State of Israel.

A Zionist could reply to Desmond Tutu by quoting Psalm 137:5-9 with emphasis on the last verse.

5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
6 Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!

7 Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, "Rase it, rase it!
Down to its foundations!'
8 O daughter of Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall he be who requites you
with what you have done to us!
9 Happy shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!

Zionists are immune to the faith and justice based arguments of Desmond Tutu because Zionism is an Eastern European politicized form of ethnic fundamentalism that judges right and wrong only by benefit to Jews. Zionists slice and dice scripture to fit their ideology. Believers like Tutu drive Zionists wild because reminding Christian Zionists of the true meaning of the Bible might create an awareness among Christian believers of how alien Zionism is to the core of Christian (as well as genuine Jewish) beliefs and values.

Overall Desmond Tutu sent an extremely mixed message. He mentioned that "a recent report by clinical psychologist Nufan Yishai Katrim at Hebrew University speaks of how Israeli soldiers were gratuitously cruel and carried out acts of brutality to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip." He asserted, "When you uphold an unjust dispensation it corrodes your humanity." Yet, he implied that the unjust dispensation was the Occupation and not the belief that racist Eastern European invaders had the right to make Palestine into a Zionist state despite the democratic will of the native Palestinian population.

Tutu claimed to support justice for Palestinians even as he advocated a two-state solution that unjustly sacrifices Palestinian human rights -- especially residence and property rights -- to illegitimate Zionist claims. Tutu confused modern Rabbinic Judaism with Second Temple Judaism even though the two religions are very different, and he equated Judeans and Galileans of Jesus' time period with modern ethnic Ashkenazim, who for the most part are quite secular and who are descended from mixed Eastern European and Southern Russian populations with no ancestral ties whatsoever in Palestine.

In 1989 in the midst of the First Intifada, when IDF soldiers were casually killing, maiming, and breaking the bones of unarmed Palestinians, Tutu visited Yad Vashem and preached the following message.

"Our Lord would say that in the end the positive thing that can come is the spirit of forgiving, not forgetting, but the spirit of saying: God, this happened to us. We pray for those who made it happen, help us to forgive them and help us so that we in our turn will not make others suffer."

Both Rabbi Hier of the Wiesenthal Center, which uses the Holocaust to deflect criticism of Jewish extremism, and also the ADL, which is one of the leading Jewish hate groups in the USA, strongly condemned Tutu for expressing this fundamental Christian religious belief.

Unfortunately, Tutu's 1989 prayer was already too late. At that time period conditions then as now for Israeli Palestinians were comparable to the situation of German Jews circa 1935 or 1937 while Jerusalem Palestinians lived in circumstances similar to the experiences of German Jews during the first half of 1939, and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories faced conditions worse than those of Polish ethnic Ashkenazi in German-occupied Poland during 1940. Today, Israeli Zionists move ever closer to carrying out the sorts of mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide that Soviet Ashkenazi Communist leaders and officials planned and orchestrated in the Soviet Union during the 20s and 30s.

Of course, Tutu's logic for forgiving Israeli Zionists and their American Zionist supporters is compelling, but there must also be honest acknowledgement that Israeli Zionists are for the most part unrepentant, remorseless murderous genocidal thieves and interlopers, who are fanatically supported by some very racist Ashkenazi Americans and some very un-Christian non-Jewish Zionists of the sort that stood outside Old South Church and waved signs during the Sabeel Conference (see pictures below).

At the conclusion of the Archbishop's address, the conference organizers requested that that audience not engage the protesters as it departed for the rally in Copley Square, where Martin Federman, Jeff Halperin of ICAHD and others spoke. According to one attendee, Jeff Halperin stated the day before that a two-state solution was no longer viable. Toward the end of the rally, indie singer/songwriter David Rovics performed in support of Palestine.

During the rally New England United marched as part of a nation-wide demonstration against the US occupation of Iraq and plans to attack Iran. The marchers circled Copley Square to express solidarity with the Sabeel Conference.

I joined them as they confronted the Zionist groups with shouts of "No more wars for Israel." I yelled in Hebrew at the pro-war anti-Palestinian Jewish groups that Jewish racists like them should go f*ck themselves and received only blank stares or occasionally smiles (for speaking Hebrew?) in return.

After a few blocks of marching, I returned to Copley Square and noticed that some of the Zionists were harassing two ladies in hijab. They were Turkish from Bursa and were in a local English language class. One of the young women intended to study engineering at Northeastern after completing the class.

An elderly female Jewish Zionist was trying to get them to agree that the democratically elected ruling Turkish AK party was a force for Islamic extremism. I pointed out that Turkey has a problem with intolerant secularists, who are unwilling to permit religious women to wear hijabs in universities and in government buildings. I asked the Zionist whether she would support an American government that forbade married Orthodox Jewish women from attending a university because they wore head coverings. She left.

Then three more Zionists ganged up on the Turkish women to intimidate them into expressing support for Israel. An Oriental argued that Israeli Palestinians had equality because he knew an Israeli Palestinian that had a successful law practice within the State of Israel. I retorted than one of the largest slaveholders in ante bellum Georgia was black. Did that mean that blacks and whites were equal before the Civil War?

The Zionists cycled through the usual claims. Because there was no sovereign Palestinian state, Jews could create their own state there despite the wishes of the native population. The Zionists won, and the Palestinians should just get over it. It was ridiculous for Palestinians to claim a right of return on the basis of events that took place 60 years ago even though Jews may dishonestly claim a right of return on the basis of a misinterpretation of events of 2000 years ago. These Zionists were racist, denied the human rights of the native population and rejected the concept of democratic self-determination for all but white Europeans. For the sake of the State of Israel they were willing to sacrifice every American principle as well as American lives, influence, and wealth.

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Horowitz: Archetype of Racist American Jewish Incitement

The Paradigmatic Career of David Horowitz
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

David Horowitz' career provides a lens through which the intellectual, political and social developments of an important segment of the American Jewish community can be analyzed for the period from the 1930s until today. 

David Horowitz was born in 1939. His parents were Russian Jewish American communists loyal to the Soviet Union at least until Khrushchev denounced Stalin.  While he was an undergraduate at Columbia, Horowitz passed through a phase of Schachtmanism, which was a variant of Trotskyitism less hostile to the Soviet Union.  As a graduate student at Columbia, he was active in the New Left. After his graduate studies, he became an editor at the leftist magazine Ramparts. At this time period he become involved with the Black Panthers as an expression of his civil rights activism. An accountant friend was killed while she tried to straighten out Black Panther finances, and an attorney friend was crippled while attempting to defend some members of the Black Panthers. As a consequence, according to Horowitz he became disenchanted with the Black Power movement, and the mass killings of Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge in combination with the apologetics of the Left and growing left hostility toward Israel eventually caused him to break with the Left and become a Neocon even if he rejects this label for himself.  Horowitz differs with Christian evangelical conservatives primarily because of his support for homosexual rights.

Nowadays, Horowitz despises affirmative action and rejects reparations for slavery. In 1989 he founded the Center for the Study of Popular culture whose name was changed to the David Horowitz Freedom Center in 2006. This think tank has raised about $1 million per year primarily from the ultraconservative Olin and Scaife foundations. Horowitz opposed US intervention in Kosovo but has supported every US military action against Muslims since the 1970s. Controlling academic discourse especially with respect to Israel is a major project of the Freedom Center, and since 2001 the Center has been heavily involved in inciting Islamophobia.

The secular Russian-Jewishness of Horowitz' career is striking. Russian Communism was to a large extent the revenge of Russianized populations that were denied the same political access as the Russian elite. Russian Jews took leadership roles in Russian communism because of their higher level of education and experience in organizing. Russian Jewish Americans brought this pattern to the USA even though the degree of exclusion of Jews from positions of power in the USA was nowhere as strict as it had been in Czarist Russia. Jews became union organizers and leaders in left-wing and radical politics. Support for African American civil rights was to some extent opportunistic because the higher African Americans rose socially and politically, the less alien American Jewish elites began to appear to traditional American white Christian elites. Jewish activists in the civil rights movement also tended to manipulate African American leaders to support Israel, and David Horowitz' career with the Black Panthers shows examples of such behavior.

Stokely Carmichael and other Black Power leaders drove the Jewish leadership from the civil rights movement when they lost patience with Jewish activists, who like Horowitz were using civil rights activism as a means of advancing Jewish interests. In the 70s Horowitz came into direct contact with some of the wealthiest Americans while he and Peter Collier were researching a series of books on America's monied elite. During the same time period a portion of unaccounted cash aid to Israel as a result of the Egypt-Israel peace was diverted to the US to promote Israeli interests. One can imagine that a higher income might have begun to look quite attractive to Horowitz, and he began to move away from leftism to a political position that could serve both the interests of the wealthiest Americans and the State of Israel while he enriched himself in ways that working for leftist causes never could.

In the pattern of secular or messianic Eastern European Jewish antinomianism that goes back to the 17th century, Horowitz dumped and married several wives while he kept company with a succession of college students as he worked on academic freedom issues that served as cover for the goal of making sure that colleges indoctrinated ideas favorable to the conservative white racist and Jabotinskian Zionist political agenda. In attacking academics David Horowitz has pioneered the google-smear tactic, which Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan describes as follows.

It seems to me that David Horowitz and some far right wing friends of his have hit upon a new way of discrediting a political opponent, which is the GoogleSmear. It is an easy maneuver for someone like Horowitz, who has extremely wealthy backers, to set up a web magazine that has a high profile and is indexed in google news. Then he just commissions persons to write up lies about people like me (leavened with innuendo and out-of-context quotes). Anyone googling me will likely come upon the smear profiles, and they can be passed around to journalists and politicians as though they were actual information.

The attempt to control or intimidate academic discourse corresponds to a Central and Eastern European Jewish pattern. The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany by R. S. Levy describes in detail how German Jewish advocacy organizations like the Zentralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith) used the legal system

• to force perceived enemies into bankruptcy,
• to attack members of the academic community believed unfriendly,
• to ban books or
• to force publishers to change offending passages.

Horowitz works with Daniel Pipes's CampusWatch in the ongoing attempt to intimidate university professors under the aegis of the following Freedom Center programs describe at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz_Freedom_Center.

• FrontPage Magazine -- an online "conservative" political magazine and website, edited by Horowitz, that is the successor to Heterodoxy (see below). Its main focus is on issues pertaining to foreign policy, war, and terrorism.
• Discover the Networks (previously, and still often referred to as, "Discover the Network") - A database of what it describes as organizations and "activists for leftwing agendas and causes -- egalitarians, socialists, and opponents of American 'imperialism'",[7] with a Java applet to display their interconnections in graphic form.[8]This description can include Jihadists, "anti-American" strains of anti-Iraq War activists, etc. After two years of development, went online in February, 2005, with a staff of two at a cost of about $500,000. [9]
• Students for Academic Freedom- claims chapters on 150 campuses. Opposes "indoctrination".[10]
• Wednesday Morning Club - In 2006 the Center held twenty-one Wednesday Morning Club events with speakers ranging from former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson, Wafa Sultan, General Georges Sada,Judge Charles W. Pickering, Dennis Prager, Shelby Steele and Melanie Morgan with Catherine Moy. Speakers in 2007 include Dinesh D'Souza, Dore Gold, Bruce Herschensohn and John O'Sullivan. In previous years speakers have included then-Governor George W. Bush (1999), then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, Robert Bork, Representatives Tom DeLay and Henry Hyde, Senators Trent Lott, Bill Frist and Joseph Lieberman, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes and George Will.[11]
• Jihad Watch (or Jihadwatch; also Dhimmi Watch) - blogs and articles on the ongoing "Jihad".[12]
• The Individual Rights Foundation - Organization of lawyers to fight speech codes and political correctness on campuses and elsewhere. Participated as Amicus Curiae in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the successful defense of the Boy Scouts of America against the ACLU in the Supreme Court. [13][14]
• Libertas - A forum for promoting conservative films in Hollywood. It presents the conservative Liberty Film Festival.[15]^[3]
• Restoration Weekend - Annual conservative fundraising and networking event.

Note that JihadWatch/DhimmiWatch is for the most part run by the non-Jewish Robert Spencer, who lately has been meeting with the European extremist anti-Muslim right in order to coordinate anti-Muslim political efforts. (See http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-21-2007/0004686363&EDATE= .)

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is the latest Islamophobic project of the Freedom Center. If Horowitz is trying to increase suspicions of American Muslims, the silliness of his program seems to create contempt for the Freedom Center while it inspires non-Muslim American interest and conversion to Islam.

According to http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/23/horowitz-islamofacism/,

Kareem Shora, the Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, said that Horowitz was dramatically overstating the number of participating schools:

• We contacted those institutions, alerting them to the fact that their name was being used, and wondering what exactly was taking place. … It's important to note though, after we contacted those institutions, most of those institutions indicated that no such events is taking place on those campus. And many contacted the sponsors and told them, "do not use my institution's name in your campaign," including some very renowned universities such as Yale and Princeton.

Shora also said that the president of Liberty University, the evangelical school founded by Jerry Falwell, also had their name removed from Horowitz's list.

Much of the criticism that Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week speakers make about Islam also applies to Orthodox Judaism. Possibly Horowitz et al. are so ignorant of Judaism that they are unaware of the similarities of Islam and Orthodox Judaism, but it is more probable that the Islamophobes are just trying to recast Islamophobia according to the model of late 19th and early 20th century anti-Semitism and are focusing on critiques that worked against Judaism in the past.

Horowitz may not care about the effectiveness of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. He may be able to raise money simply on the basis of presence at American universities and the degree of controversy that he creates. If such is the case, attempts to suppress Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week may benefit Freedom Center fundraising.  Instead of becoming defensive, American Muslims should go on the offensive and strengthen alliances with progressive and conservative non-Muslims, who are aghast at the damage that Zionists and extremist American Jews have managed to do to American society and to US foreign policy.. 

If it is legitimate to open up discussion of Islamo-Fascism on American campuses, can American Jews and prejudiced Judeophiles object to a Zionazism Awareness Week? The late but highly respected University of Wisconsin professor George Mosse discussed the similarities of German Nazi and Zionist ideology extensively while Harvard Professor Jay Harris has mentioned in his classes the superficial likeness of German Nazism and Zionism.  Zionists so casually commit atrocities against the native population of Palestine that "superficial" is probably an inappropriate adjective.  Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is an opportunity for Muslims to open up a discussion of the legitimacy of the Zionist state, of the damage that the US Israel alliance does to America, and of the excessive influence that Jewish fanatics have in the USA.

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Overcoming Zionism (i.e. StandWithUS) at UMich

Sometimes they win -- Sometimes they loose

Here is the latest press release relating to the attempt to deny distribution to Pluto Press for publishing Professor Joel Kovel's book entitled Overcoming Zionism.

Executive Board of the University of Michigan Press:
Statement on the status of the Pluto Press contract
October 22, 2007
 
The University of Michigan Press Executive Board unanimously agreed to continue the distribution contract between the University of Michigan Press and Pluto Press under existing contract terms.
 
Distribution agreements are undertaken strictly as business relationships and have historically been a small part of the UM Press's business. Currently, the Press distributes for five publishers. As is the case with all such commercial arrangements, books distributed on behalf of clients are not edited, reviewed, or produced by the UM Press, and they do not bear the imprimatur of the Press or of the University of Michigan.
 
University presses typically do not have stated guidelines for distribution agreements, but
the recent controversy surrounding the contract with Pluto Press has underscored the need for them. In the coming year, Executive Board members will develop policy guidelines for distribution agreements. Underlying its deliberations will be the principle of freedom of expression, which is both fundamental to the University of Michigan's educational mission and integral to the UM Press's goals.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -- Wendell Phillips

Quoting Phillips is appropriate because he was a leading abolitionist. Zionism is a crime similar to Southern Slavery, and many of its primary ideas can be traced to John C. Calhoun's defense of Slavery.
Just as abolitionism was the only ethical response to Southern Slavery, a new abolitionism to dismantle the Zionist state and anathematize Zionist ideology is the only acceptable course of action today.

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Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail!

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Natalie Portman's Genocidal Racism and Utter Hypocrisy

Harvard Honors Remorseless Unrepentant Racist
by Joachim Martillo HC '78 (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

The State of Israel is impoverishing and brutalizing the native population of Palestine as part of rapacious genocidal program that racist Eastern Europeans developed in the late 19th century and that the State of Israel is carrying out right before our eyes to this day.

Could the Harvard Business School, Professor Michael Chu, FINCA, the Social Enterprise Club, the Women and Public Policy Program of the KSG, and the Women's Center of the FAS possibly come up with a more offensive way to highlight microfinance than by hosting unrepentant Zionist hypocrite Natalie Portman as FINCA's Ambassador of Hope and co-chairperson of FINCA's Village Banking "Call to Action" Campaign?

If Natalie Portman were genuinely concerned about international social work, she should spend at least four months in Gaza in living under brutal murderous Zionist oppression just as the Palestinians do and then return to Harvard to talk about "taking leadership in the fight against poverty" and against criminal political ideologies that like Zionism cause so much suffering and impoverishment in the world.

Until Natalie Portman (Hershlag) acknowledges and repents the crimes that have been committed in her name as a Jew and shows some genuine remorse for the horrors that Zionists have perpetrated, she is just another vicious genocidal Israel-born Zionist Euro-Jewish racist, who has benefitted and continues to benefit from the plunder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of the native population of Palestine. 

According to http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Portman.html, Portman spews the usual nonsense about Jewish-Arab cousinhood.

When the Harvard Crimson ran an op-ed article labeling Israel "racist," Portman wrote a rebuttal that said "Israelis and Arabs are historically cousins. Until we accept the fact that we are constituents of the same family, we will blunder in believing that a loss for one 'side' is not a loss for all humankind."

The above claim is the sort of vacuous propaganda by which ethnic Ashkenazim like Portman justify the invasion and theft of Palestine.

Portman's Wikipedia entry indicates that Porman lives and breathes Zionist lies.  "Portman is credited as a research assistant to Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel."

From http://www.natalie-portman.ws/news.html:

Natalie Portman's Israeli Dreams
29th May 2002

Actress Natalie Portman is determined to find a home in her native Jerusalem, Israel, as soon as political strife in the Middle East dies down. The Jewish star admits she's deeply troubled by ongoing violence in her homeland, but it's not putting her off her dream of owning a home there one day. She says, "I really love the States, but my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home. Anytime anything happens to anyone there, it's like a limb's been ripped off. I'm very protective of Israel, obviously, but I'm more protective of humanity than of any of my own personal desires."

Portman's ancestral homeland is in Europe. She lived for three years in the State of Israel as the child of Euro-American thieves and interlopers. Is there not something completely psychotic, unethical and monstrous that she considers Jerusalem her home without a second thought about the atrocities that people like her have committed and continue to commit against the native population of Palestine?

october 24

FINCA and Natalie Portman Action and Leadership in the Fight Against Poverty Wednesday, October 24, 6 PM Burden Auditorium Harvard Business School Join us for a special event featuring Natalie Portman, Golden Globe Award-winning actress and social activist, who will disc uss her work with global microfinance organization FINCA International and how to get involved in FINCA's Village Banking "Call to Action" Campaign. As FINCA's Ambassador of Hope and co-chairperson of the recently launched campaign, the 26-year old Harvard graduate has traveled around the world to see how microfinance is changing lives. Portman will discuss her experiences with clients in the field, show video clips of her travels, and talk with HBS Professor, Michael Chu about microfinance and the next generation's responsibility for taking leadership in the fight against poverty. Presented by the Social Enterprise Club Presents in conjunction with the Women and Public Policy Program, KSG and the Women's Center, FAS. For more information, please go to www.villagebanking.org Must present valid Harvard Student/Faculty ID to attend

For the most current WAPPP event information, please visit us online at www.ksg.harvard.edu/wappp/events/index.html For directions to the Kennedy School campus, please go to http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/main/directions.htm.

 

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Ahmadinejad, Columbia Faculty Politics, Martin Peretz, Islamic Fascism

Ahmadinejad and Tsar Nicholas I

Ethan Stanislawski, who is the son of the eminent Columbia Jewish Studies Professor Michael Stanislawski, posted an extremely interesting entry on The Voices blog. I have included this article after my comments.

Stanislawski provides some disturbing information about the politics of both the Columbia Faculty and also of Newton Jews like David Project President Charles Jacobs. Even though Martin Peretz, who is the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, really lives in Cambridge, he clearly flies with that flock and like Jacobs believes that he is some sort of avatar of liberalism or progressivism.

[The comment below is color-coded with sections in Ethan Stanislawski's article.]

Peretz is ticked off that Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad would challenge standard but long ago discredited Zionist narratives.

Peretz is also thoroughly immersed in the discourse of Islamic Fascism.

I agree with Peretz that Michael Stanislawski is a very good historian even though the Professor seems to have Zionist essentialist views of Jewish ethnicity.

Two years ago was the high point the David Project's attack on Columbia's Arab and Muslim American faculty members.
At that time The David Project was frequently showing the movie Columbia Unbecoming in order to slander Khalidi, Massad, Georges Saliba and Hamid Dabashi while at the same time, it was defaming leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) and scare-mongering against the ISB's Roxbury Mosque project.

Altogether the activities of the David Project constitute conspiracy against the rights of Arab and Muslim Americans to assemble freely, to practice their religion, to engage in free expression and to earn a living.

Such conspiracy is a violation of Title 18 of the US Criminal Code. Ethan Stanislawski provides evidence that Peretz was playing a role right in the center of the David Project's criminal activities.

The Jewish scholarly institution in question is probably the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

I am surprised that Peretz would suggest Bollinger was Jewish and then ascribe the role of court Jew to Professor Stanislawski. The court Jews provided services to non-Jewish princes.

Ethan Stanislawski seems to have misunderstood Peretz' curiosity about Professor Stanislawski's feelings about the second invitation to Ahmadinejad to come to Columbia. Peretz was aware of Professor Stanislawski's role in the withdrawal of the first invitation, but since then Peretz probably has not been corresponding with Professor Stanislawski.

I am stunned that Jewish faculty like Professor Stanislawski are acting as gatekeepers or arbiteurs of acceptable discourse at Columbia. The misrepresentation of Ahmadinejad's remarks in US media is well-documented, but in a situation where (often Jewish) racists and hate groups are manipulating the information accessible to the American public, giving Zionist Jewish academics any input into decisions about inviting leaders like Ahmadinejad to address the university community is completely inappropriate.

Professor Stanislawski's book entitled Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825-1855 carefully documents the misrepresentations, falsehoods, and slanders that many Jewish writers have spread about Tsarist Russia. I am particularly distressed that in the affair of the first invitation of Ahmadinejad Professor Stanislawski for all intents and purposes certified some very similar misrepresentations, falsehoods, and slanders that have originated with fanatic and extremist Jewish racists, who seize any opportunity to demonize Arabs and Muslims in order to normalize or legitimize Zionist plunder, oppression and genocide of the native Palestinian population.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Yet another reason not to read The New Republic

As if you needed another.

I have done my best to be quiet about talling about Ahmadinejad's appearance in Columbia, if for nothing else in that my father is in the thick of it. But I will draw the line at being inaccurate and borderline offensive, a line that was crossed by Marty Peretz, who my dad's known since he was an undergrad at Harvard, on his TNR blog The Spine. His post, and my dad's email, are as followed:

--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: mfs3@columbia.edu
Date: Sep 27, 2007 6:02 PM
Subject: last thing you need to read, but this one is pretty funny-- you might want to share it with Aharon Barak
To: Lee Bollinger < bollinger@columbia.edu>

"From The Sprine, Martin Peretz's blog:

09.27.07

INSIDE THE COLUMBIA DRAMA:
Columbia is "reeling," reads the headline in Wednesday's New York Times . Columbia is the Sulzbergers's university, and they had traditionally put a wordy buffer between what really happened at the institution and their paper's readers. Of course, that's virtually impossible to do these days. Still, it is not the Times that has excelled in reportage on Columbia during the past few tempestuous years. It is the Sun which has taken on that burden -- and, with some pleasure, I would think, since the university is a model of what the upstart daily thinks of as paradigmatic of the cowardice of liberal institutions in general. Or worse, the pusillanimity of liberal institutions when their very liberalism is being undermined from within.

In any case, Columbia is really reeling; and its wobbliness about what it stands for has been magnified since Lee Bollinger became president. He is simply scared out of his wits by Edward Said's less bright heirs on Morningside Heights. I have posted on this matter before. Actually, I am sure that Said would never have condoned an invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a lower class thug and a Shi'a besides, both an offense to Said's elitism and to his ill-fated Christian maneuvering to make Arab nationalism safely secular. I note that, with his usual discretion and allergy to street fights, Rashid Khalidi has not been heard from on the A'jad matter. He has bigger fish to fry: making sure that that vulgar practitioner of critical theory and deconstructor and rewriter of narratives, Joseph Massud, gets tenure. And that the Barnard tenure aspirant, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who believes that archeology proves there were never any Hebrews in the Holy Land, also is tenured. My guess is that, this time, the gang loses.

Of course, it is not only Columbia that is reeling. It is Bollinger himself. The faculty see this; the students certainly see this; and the trustees who typically will give a president enough rope to hang himself see that he has. My conclusion is that Bollinger is on his way out. The mandate of heaven has deserted him. He has no authority, least of all moral authority.

I also have a speculation about why the earnest protestations of Jewish students and others who were pro-Israel never could touch Bollinger about their terrible experiences in classes in the Middle East: he himself is Jewish, maybe an ambivalent Jew, maybe a frightened Jew, but a Jew nonetheless. (emphasis added)
There are three people who have played a curious role in this drama.

One is John Coatsworth, whom Bollinger lured from Harvard to replace the sneaky Lisa Anderson as dean of the School of International and Public Affairs. What can one say about Coatsworth without having oneself strung up as a McCarthyite? Let's leave it at this: at least since graduate school at the University of Wisconsin he has been extremely radical. Why would a radical find common cause with an Islamic fascist? By the way, Coatsworth signed the Harvard divest-from-Israel petition. Did Bollinger imagine that such a person could (or would want to) restore calm to the Middle East programs at Columbia that were in his SIPA portfolio?

Richard Bulliet is the Columbia historian who negotiated with the Iranians for their president's visit. I've read what I believe is a wonderful book of his, The Camel and the Wheel, although I admit that my credentials for judgment are slight. I've also read parts of The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, a cross-your-fingers-and-hope book, predictably well-reviewed by Juan Cole, which is by now even worse than getting a good review from John Esposito. Bulliet was a supporter of the 1979 Iranian revolution.

There's a personal angle for me in this saga. It involves a Columbia professor, Michael Stanislavski, whom I have known since he was an undergraduate at Harvard and I an assistant professor. He is a very good historian, and I've read three of his books on Jewish history. Moreover, I've learned from them, although my view of E.M. Lilien (someone you don't know of) is different than his. About two years ago, I was scheduled to speak at a Columbia meeting protesting the patent bias of the Middle Eastern faculty against Israel. Michael asked me not to come, arguing that, among other things, it would be unfair to Bollinger who was well-intentioned on the matter and would take deliberate action to solve the situation. I had no interest in inflaming it. So I called the student who had invited me and told him why I would, in the end, not speak. Still, I left out Professor Stanislavski's role in my decision. Stanislavski and I have had difficult exchanges since on these matters. He even wrote a letter to the chairman of a Jewish scholarly institution saying Columbia would not cooperate with it as long as I was on its board. It was a preposterous communication: one professor's pique doesn't decide whether his university would have an institutional relationship with another part of the academy.

As this drama has unfolded I wondered what Stanislavski made of Bollinger's canceling A'jad last year, giving permission for his speaking this year. Inviting him and then attacking him, a cowardly act followed by an act of spurious bravery. There is in Jewish history the figure of the court-Jew. This Jew did financial and commercial business for the prince. Sometimes he was a medical doctor and cared for the prince and his family. He also tried to intercede for the Jews when trouble was coming their way. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed. I guess Michael failed. But Jews no longer need court-Jews, and they haven't for at least a century. It must be sad trying to fill a function that has been obsolete for so long."

---

So, Lee, an official welcome to the tribe.

And speaking of Court Jews-- I should only be so lucky: they were bankers to the princes/bishops, and most were extraordinarily rich. Can you instruct Alan or Nick to double my salary for next year --at least?

Finally, as you can see, he didn't even spell my name right.

Yes, that's right, Marty Peretz accused Lee Bollinger of being a bad Jew, even though he's not Jewish. It's true that his relationship with my dad has soured, but, judging by the some people's standards (I'm looking at you, Gawker staff), this probably puts my dad in a positive light. You can tell by Peretz's poor spelling that my dad and he have not had much interaction as of late.

But the killer part of it is the following statement by my father, the underpaid Court Jew: As this drama has unfolded I wondered what Stanislavski made of Bollinger's canceling A'jad last year, giving permission for his speaking this year. Inviting him and then attacking him, a cowardly act followed by an act of spurious bravery.

The ironic thing was that not only did my dad, in fact, respond to the issue last year, he gave Marty Peretz and exclusive of his letter. Here's that email:

Quoting Marty Peretz: Fri, 06 Oct 2006

Dear Michael,

> Thanks for sending me your letter which I will keep completely to
> myself.

> Your reasoning about why Ahmadinejad should not have been invited to
> Columbia (or to any university, for that matter) and not to the Council on
> Foreign Relations either is very compelling. Moreover, you made the case
> much better than I did.

> I fully agree with you about Lisa Anderson whom I've known since
> the start of her undistinguished academic career at Harvard. Even then,
> when she was focusing on Tunisia -or was it Libya?- she was in her calm but
> embittered fashion hostile to Israel. An anticipator of present fashions, so to
> speak. But, if Bollinger understands this, why did he permit her to be on
> the committee evaluating the students' grievances? And why, moreover,
> does he permit her to hold him and Columbia hostage to biases which are
> poisonous to a scholarly association and destructive of its relationship to
> the wider community outside?

> Thanks again.

> Marty

> At 04:19 PM 10/6/2006, you wrote:
> >Marty-- given your recent comments about Columbia, I am copying you
> >here (for your eyes only) a letter I wrote to Lee Bollinger the
> >other week about the invitation of the Iranian President to Columbia.

> >Wishing you a healthy and happy new year,

> >Michael

> >"Dear Lee,

> >Several members of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Israel
> >and Jewish Studies, faculty members, parents of Columbia students,
> >and students as well, urged me yesterday to issue a statement about
> >yesterday's fracas regarding President Ahmadinejad. Since the matter
> >became moot I decided that there was no point in doing so. But I do
> >want to circulate to you, and privately to the Advisory Board, my
> >thoughts on the matter.

> >Since you know me well, you know that I totally agree with you on
> >matters of the sanctity of academic freedom and of free speech;
> >indeed, I do not feel that I possibly can—not to speak of need--
> >enlighten you on either of those matters. But I do think that the
> >University's official response to Lisa's invitation could have been
> >more substantive regarding the subtle yet crucial questions of
> >academic freedom and free speech that were raised by yesterday's
> >events.

> >First let me say that I believe that Lisa's actions were utterly
> >inappropriate and, I surmise, deliberately provocative, in the
> >negative sense of the word, meant to put you personally, the Jewish
> >community at Columbia, and the University as a whole in an untenable
> >situation. Clearly, as you stated, the Dean of the School of
> >International and Public Affairs has the right, and the
> >responsibility, to bring to campus figures who would enhance the
> >academic discussion on campus, including bringing to the University
> >figures of controversy. But as we have spoken about so often in the
> >last several years, discussions of academic freedom often neglect
> >the issue of academic responsibility. Thus, it is not only the
> >timing of the invitation to Ahmadinejad that was so irresponsible
> >and insensitive, but in my mind, its very essence: What possible
> >enhancement of our collective or individual academic knowledge or
> >understanding of the world's situation would have been augmented by
> >his speaking on campus? Anyone at Columbia who reads the newspapers
> >or watches television already knows Ahmadinejad's repugnant views
> >all too well; this is not a question of free speech or stifled
> >speech. And, as is obvious, President Ahmadinejad deliberately and
> >vociferously opposes any discussion that challenges his views,
> >either putatively at Columbia, or as you say in your statement, in
> >Iran as well.

> >On the contrary, the question here, I would propose, is one of the
> >deliberate invitation to campus not simply of a controversial
> >figure, or even one with repugnant and absurd views, but of a
> >purveyor of hate speech. I feel absolutely confident in so labeling
> >the Iranian president, on the basis of his denial of the Holocaust,
> >which he frequently (and perhaps even cynically) advances solely to
> >foment hatred of Israel and of Jews around the world, as well as
> >his frequent calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. (I
> >need not detail here how this differs from points of view that
> >relativize the Holocaust or question the legitimacy of the
> >existence of Israel or any of its policies.) I, like you, have
> >always opposed and will continue to oppose any "hate speech" codes
> >at Columbia, since I believe none can be drafted that sufficiently
> >guard against violations of our students' and faculty's freedom of
> >speech. But the obverse of opposing hate-speech codes is not
> >automatic support for the invitation to campus of any outside
> >purveyor of hate speech, however famous or controversial, on the
> >grounds of free speech or academic freedom, in situations in which
> >there is blatantly no possible enhancement of "the academic
> >experience of our students." I see no point in pondering, at this
> >stage, the theoretical question of what would constitute a
> >situation in which an invitation to campus of a purveyor of hate
> >speech WOULD enhance the academic experience of our students. But
> >yesterday's situation seems to me to be cut-and-dried.

> >I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday to discuss other matters!

> >With best wishes,
> > Michael

So Marty Peretz lied about Lee Bollinger being Jewish, only so he can call my dad his Court Jew, and then accused my dad of not responding, when in fact, he had given Peretz an exclusive last year, and Peretz thanked him for it. Sounds like the publisher of a magazine I want to read! Frankly, Peretz's post sounded like an Isaac Bashevis Singer story, but maybe that's just me.

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