On Sep 11, 2007, at 12:15 PM, David B. Shemano wrote:
I will be happy to take the role of a fanatic. Your sentence is incomplete. What you really mean is "what is the most negative thing one is permitted to say about Israel WITHOUT BEING CRITICIZED OR SUFFERING ANY CONSEQUENCES." Kovel, as well as the overwhelming number of people on this list, think Zionism is wrong and Israel, as a Jewish state, should not exist. I know it is hard to believe, but there are some people out there that actually disagree with those sentiments, so expect to be criticized, harshly, if you express that view. It is a comedy watching Jimmy Carter, or Mearsheimer, cry like little babies every time they are criticized. Get over it.
I know Joel Kovel fairly well and he's tough. He doesn't cry when criticized. That's not really the point. The point is the suppression of criticism and the treatment of critics as evil pariahs whose fingers are itchy to restart the ovens at Auschwitz. This is only the latest in a recent string of instances - e.g., the firestorm over Walt and Mearsheimer's paper and book, denial of tenure to Finkelstein, the tenure fight at Barnard over Nadia Abu El-Haj, the roasting of Tony Judt, etc. You'd have to search a long time to find anything as critical of Israel in the U.S. press as you can routinely find in Ha'aretz, and that's not all that much, really. Doug
