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2005-11-14 Home Front: Politix

Why Juan Cole and US Middle East studies in general are Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

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Posted by Dan Darling 2005-11-14 09:47|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 "Judaism has given us so much that is noble in ethical religion, and what the Likud is doing is an insult to that long and glorious tradition."

GASP!...Will this anti-semitism never cease?

Getagrip

Posted by DepotGuy 2005-11-14 11:22|| 2005-11-14 11:22|| Front Page Top

#2 Likud is operating well within the long and noble Jewish tradition of each having a different idea of what should be done, and arguing fiercely for it until a momentary consensus is achieved.... pending changing conditions or new information. Professor Cole is busily demonstrating that he is a consummately ignorant ass, not nearly as intelligent as he fondly believes. And of course an antisemitic bigot, but presumabley that goes without saying.

Posted by trailing wife 2005-11-14 12:45|| 2005-11-14 12:45|| Front Page Top

#3 Too often criticism of Likud and US-Israel relations is equated with anti-Semitism. These Quixotic extrapolations not only fail to refute an opposing opinion but dilute the authentic mission of stopping religious bigotry. IMHO

Posted by DepotGuy 2005-11-14 13:20|| 2005-11-14 13:20|| Front Page Top

#4 You want to assert that the Likud is the equivalent of the Syrian Baathists, DG? I must've missed all the Israeli political prisons and regular thumping of opposition figures ...

Posted by Dan Darling">Dan Darling 2005-11-14 14:15|| http://www.regnumcrucis.blogspot.com]">[http://www.regnumcrucis.blogspot.com] 2005-11-14 14:15|| Front Page Top

#5 dual citizenships hurt in that loyalties are always in question, whether we're talking Israeli/US or Mexican/US.

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2005-11-14 14:22|| 2005-11-14 14:22|| Front Page Top

#6 There is one similarity between Lefties and Muslims: members of both groups have have intellectual integrity of cockroaches on PCP.

Posted by gromgoru 2005-11-14 14:50|| 2005-11-14 14:50|| Front Page Top

#7 Like Jessie Jackson's Hymie comments, it appears Black Americans have no love for Jews. TW can you postulate on where this bigotry comes from? I'm a non-prac Christian American mutt 17 generations removed from my European heritage with out a prejudical bone in my body. Although I do agree with racial profiling. Where does anti-semitism come from?

Posted by Rightwing 2005-11-14 15:36|| 2005-11-14 15:36|| Front Page Top

#8 As a cockroach (but not on PCP), I find that comparison insulting.

Please refrain form insulting us roaches in the future ok? Thanks!

Posted by Charlie the Cockroach 2005-11-14 15:37|| 2005-11-14 15:37|| Front Page Top

#9 RW - good poit, especially since Jews were heavily represented in the non-black civil rights figures

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2005-11-14 15:48|| 2005-11-14 15:48|| Front Page Top

#10 Great documentation of the moonbattery of cole, and by extention, to middle east studies due to the election of cole as their leader. Alas, no additional datum was needed here. But the WHY in the title seems unanswered. WHY are middle east studies in general so wacked out?

Posted by Dave 2005-11-14 18:20|| 2005-11-14 18:20|| Front Page Top

#11 "You want to assert that the Likud is the equivalent of the Syrian Baathists, DG?"

Huh...what? I don't recall making any such assertion. I just find it humorous that anytime there is criticism of anything Isreal the Ole anti-Semitism accusation usually is part of the rebuff. I also find it equally humorous that Islamists always find a way to blame everything bad on the Jews. Is it a cynical sense of humor or just sick in the head? I'm not sure myself.

Posted by DeotGuy 2005-11-14 18:30|| 2005-11-14 18:30|| Front Page Top

#12 it's Israel, and they have other than Likud members. Check on your Arab parliaments and see how much diversity they have. Your attention (assuming no agenda) would be better spent there, DG. Barring that, you welcome attention of the negative type, antisemitism one aspect of that...

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2005-11-14 18:49|| 2005-11-14 18:49|| Front Page Top

#13 I was referring to this:

These Quixotic extrapolations not only fail to refute an opposing opinion but dilute the authentic mission of stopping religious bigotry.

Cole says in the excerpts provided that he considers Likud just as bad the Syrian Baathists. That may not make him an anti-Semite, but it sure as hell tells you a lot about how warped his sense of moral equivalence is. Then again, this is a guy whose only way to explain to his readers just how bad Ahmadinejad is was to compare him to Bush.

Posted by Dan Darling">Dan Darling 2005-11-14 20:23|| http://www.regnumcrucis.blogspot.com]">[http://www.regnumcrucis.blogspot.com] 2005-11-14 20:23|| Front Page Top

#14 Thoughts on Afro-American antisemitism? Ok, I'll try, although I'm likely to get in very deep shit here, with people whose opinions I value... and with the caveat that I was born in 1961, and so wasn't paying much attention during the critical period, and these thoughts are very off the cuff.

Alllll righty then, in no particular order, and with the hope that you read to the end before you crucify me:

Following the initial non-violent Civil Rights movement and, indeed, fighting with them for primacy amongst the Black community was the violent Black Power movement. This fight had been going on since the very beginning pre-Civil War, the two threads of the argument being represented by Booker T. Washington, who advocated self-improvement and trades training for former slaves -- to make them economically independent of the White community -- and Frederick Douglass -- who demanded that the White community recognize that that African-Americans were equally as human, and therefore entitled to the same protections under the law as the White citizenry. I do not argue here that either Professor Washington or Professor Douglass advocated violence, but rather that they sought different means to improve the lot of their fellows.

A strong minority of the non-violent Civil Rights movement were Whites who sympathised with the unjust predicament of their Black countrymen, and a significant portion of those were Jewish. We were always told that this was because of the traditional Jewish call for justice and mercy, and especially equality under the law, a deficit of which is a strong part of Jewish history. Which is pretty much why, along with a very strong streak of idealism, there are Jews to be found in every kind of justice and liberation movement (cf. the early and even later versions of the Communists and Socialists, and the neo-cons nowadays).

However, for the Black Power movement, anything that smacked of the White Boss Man had to be removed from view and memory, lest the tale of Black self-empowerment be weakened. And the Jews in this country, for the most part, are Caucasian. So stories of Jewish slave-owners in the anti-bellum South were told and re-told, horror tales of grasping Jewish landlords and cheating shopkeepers to beware of in the North, and the existence of Jewish participation, support, and even leadership alongside their Black fellows in the Civil Rights movement erased from memory. Thus I had a Black colleague once who'd grown up with Dr. King's children in Atlanta, who told me in all seriousness that all the good things in the world had been invented by Black people, and all the bad things, including AIDS and war, came from Whites. She then recommended to me her "little Jewish ob-gyn," because Jews are better doctors than Blacks -- she'd even dropped the Black woman who'd treated her previously, because the woman just couldn't be as good.

And of course, people like Jesse Jackson and whoever now leads the Black Muslims are just evil and bigotted, and would be the same no matter to what ethnicity or skin colour they'd been born.

But truth be told, that woman was the only African-American, or Black of any nationality, who said or thought such things. And I was 28 years old before I met her. Certainly I am not aware of such sentiments from the Black members of Rantburg, and I would argue that they are as fine representatives of their people as the rest of the good people here.

Ok, you can get mad at me now, but I tried my best.

Posted by trailing wife 2005-11-14 23:01|| 2005-11-14 23:01|| Front Page Top

23:38 Frank G
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