Criticism of Wiesenthal Center's 2010 Top Ten Anti-Semitic Slurs

The Simon Wiesenthal Center came out with a list called the 2010 Top Ten Anti-Semitic Slurs. Here are a few issues I have with it:

First, it quotes Helen Thomas as saying, "Jews should get the hell out of Palestine. They should go home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else." If you see the actual video of the Helen Thomas comments, you can tell this is not an accurate quote. Perhaps it was meant as a paraphrase, in which case it should not have used quote marks. As a paraphrase it is accurate.  It is incorrect to argue that Thomas was referring to the West Bank as "Palestine," and was simply saying Israelis should "get the hell out of" the West Bank. Her meaning is clear by the context. If she was referring to Israelis, why not simply say go back to Israel? Her reference to them going back to Poland and Germany makes plain that her comment was about Jews, and her inclusion in the list is therefore appropriate. However the Wiesenthal Center should not place quote marks around a paraphrase.

Secondly, I'm not so sure the inclusion of Thilo Sarrazin's remarks is appropriate.  I have not read the entirety of what he said, but I doubt there was an antisemitic intent. It seems more like a an uninformed remark that one might expect someone to casually give in light of the various news reports that crop up about this or that genetics studies on the Jews that show common haplotypes or haplogroups shared by different Jewish diaspora communities. It is more an expression of casual ignorance due to such news reports rather than an expression of antisemitism.

Finally, I don't believe Rick Sanchez's remarks were an expression of antisemitism either.  Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Rick Sanchez.  However, his general point that Jews, albeit a minority, are hardly oppressed in the U.S. (and in fact are often quite successful, such as...Jon Stewart) is accurate. I don't care for his whining that a rich white guy like him is oppressed by being made fun of just because he is surnamed Sanchez, but Jews aren't oppressed in this country either.

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is a liar.

In a recent NPR piece ("Israelis, Palestinians: What Peace Means to Me"), Lourdes Garcia-Navarro claims, "Recent polls have shown that the majority of Jews don't want to live next to Arabs, and most Arabs don't want to live next to religious Jews." The polls she is apparently referring to are discussed on CAMERA's website here.  Aside from the fact that the poll does not show a "majority" of Jews don't want to live next to Arabs, Garcia-Navarro deceptively tries to qualify Arab attitudes as being related to "religious Jews" only. The poll plainly has data regarding Arab attitudes toward living next to "Ultra-Orthodox" Jews, AND Jews in general.  Nor can she hide behind the fact that she used the word "most," where the Arab attitudes against living next to Jews in general is only at 50%. First, she decided that 46% of Jews having an unfavorable attitude toward living next to Arabs is a "majority." If 46% counts as a "majority," then 50% counts as "most." Second, speaking only to the data regarding "Ultra-Orthodox" Jews rather than the data that would be obviously comparable to Jewish attitudes toward Arab neighbors in general is consciously deceptive. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is a liar. I shot a note about this to CAMERA, so we'll see if they take the issue  up.

More Non-Palestinian Palestinians

HPMonitor has a post on activist Noura Erekat engaging in a protest against Israel wherein she exclaims, "the indigenous people have been run out..." An alternative romanization of her name is Urayqat, and she is the niece of PLO official Saeb Erekat, of the prominent Urayqat family of Abu Dis. Unfortunately for her implied claim of indigenousness, historians such as Palestinianist Alexander Scholch (see his Palestine in Transformation, 1856-1882) know from Arabic historical sources that the Urayqat family is of bedouin origin and came to Abu Dis from across the Jordan river. Perhaps someone should start compiling a list that details the non-Palestinian family origins of all of these public Palestinian Arabs who prevaricate on the ancient bona fides and indigenousness of the Palestinian Nation (as far as the historical record allows).

Citizenship Oaths

That Israel's actions, policies, and laws are criticized according to double-standards--one standard for Israel, and another for other similarly-situated countries--is a fact that has become so plain and axiomatically true that when a new Israel controversy arises, such as that of the "loyalty oath" bill that was brought before the Knesset, it can be presumed that the controversy is essentially manufactured under a newly-contrived standard that hasn't been thought to be applied to similar situations elsewhere. That's why addressing the "loyalty oath" here is more in the nature of a game of pretend than an actual exercise of proof where there is a genuine issue to be proven. The bill in question initially would have required those seeking Israeli citizenship under the normal naturalization process to take an oath of fealty to the "Jewish, democratic state" of Israel. Netanyahu apparently had it amended to apply to those seeking citizenship under the Law of Return as well. (Such expedited "laws of return" aren't themselves unusual). Take a look at a few other "loyalty oaths" that are administered as part of the naturalization process:

The Organic Law of Georgia on Citizenship of Georgia includes an oath of allegiance with the following language: "I recognize Georgian as a state language of Georgia and undertake to respect Georgian culture and national traditions."

Law of the Republic of Armenia on the Citizenship of the Republic of Armenia includes an oath with the following language: "I am obliged to respect the State language, the national culture and the traditions of the Republic of Armenia."

The Lithuanian Law on Citizenship includes an oath with the following language: "I pledge to respect the state language of Lithuania, its culture and customs, and to strengthen the democratic Lithuanian state."

The oaths for each of these countries make reference to an ethnocultural core of the country.  There are Lithuanians and there are citizens of Lithuania. There are the Armenian people, and there are Russian people and Azerbaijani people and others who are Armenian citizens.  There's no "Georgian culture and national traditions" as such if "Georgian" refers to merely "of, or relating to, the citizens of Georgia" since those citizens have cultures that range from Russian culture, Greek culture, Azerbaijani culture, Jewish, etc.  The reference to "Georgian culture" would therefore become empty and meaningless in the vastness of what it would encompass.  Clearly the "Georgian culture" is in reference to the culture of the ethnic majority of Georgia: the Georgian people.  So whether a citizenship oath includes a pledge to the "democratic Lithuanian state" or "Jewish, democratic state," a state's interest in protecting and promoting the language, customs, and national history of its ethnocultural majority is firmly rooted in what is traditionally viewed as being within the legitimate purview of state policy.

Doumani of Palestine II

I wanted to follow up on yesterday's post about Doumani's family history in Palestine.  Douma is in what is called Mount Lebanon, which is (or was) virtually the homeland of the Maronite Christian sect (typically associated with those indigenous to Lebanon).  This suggests that Doumani's family is, or at least originally was, Maronite.  I don't know that this is true--I could not find information on his religious background in a brief internet search--however let's assume it is true (and that assumption isn't hurt by the fact that "Beshara" is an arabization of "parish"). In thinking about yesterday's post, I was reminded of an exchange of sorts that Yehoshua Porath was involved in regarding the demographics of Palestine wherein Porath claims that Palestine had no Maronites in 1895 save for a few villages north of the Galilee. There is some evidence that would allow one to dispute this, but assuming its truth, and granting that Doumani's family was in Haifa by 1948, it would follow that it is likely that Doumani's family did not immigrate to Haifa from Lebanon until sometime past the late 1800's.  The fact that this conclusion, if true, would not be anything that Beshara Doumani doesn't very well know himself adds to the colorful mix of cynicism and hypocrisy that characterizes the professional Palestinianists like Doumani.

Doumani of Palestine

I came across an article in Frontpagemag.com ("Stanford Hosts a Hate Talk") describing a lecture by Stanford professor Beshara Doumani, a practiced expert on anachronistically projecting the modern construct of a Palestinian nationality backwards in history. The article reads in part:

UC Berkeley history professor Beshara Doumani came to Stanford University on September 29, 2010, to give a lecture sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies titled, “The Iron Law and Ironies of Palestinian History”. . . Beinin, quoting from Doumani’s faculty bio, noted that he specializes in “recovering the history of social groups, places and time periods that have been silenced or erased by conventional scholarship on the modern Middle East.” This seemingly innocuous description belied a very specific, partisan subtext.

Doumani represents another example of Palestinianist academic or Palestinianist activist whose career consists of trying to convince the world that the Palestinian national construct is a long-existing national identity predating the 20th century with the same bona fides as any other national identity. The irony of the efforts of these activists lies in their own, decidedly non-Palestinian, family histories.  Rashid Khalidi is one acute example, being descended from Khalid ibn al-Walid, the Qurayshi military commander who led the Muslim forces in conquering and settling Syria. The family of Beshara Doumani, as his name suggests, likely originally, though not immediately, comes from Douma, Lebanon. This is not an isolated example, but something one encounters again and again, especially with those families claiming a connection with the various urban centers of Palestine. Doumani specifically makes claim to his parents being from Haifa.  According to one biographical blurb about Doumani, "His father's family was forced out of Haifa when Israel was established in 1948. Doumani was born in Saudi Arabia in 1957 - far from his father's home." Here we come to the second irony of Doumani's professional Palestinianist victimology.  First, most of the Haifa Arab community that left, evacuated before May 14, 1948, the day of Israel's declared statehood. This at the very least casts doubt on the implied causal assertion--that "when Israel was established", his "family was forced out of Haifa . . ." More damning, however, is the work of Efraim Karsh demonstrating that most of the Haifa Arab community that left evacuated not due to being forced out.  Rather, they evacuated in the face of the embarrassingly strenuous efforts of the Jewish leadership of Haifa to convince them to stay.

This day, during the Arab campaign in 1936 . . .

A bomb was thrown at a Jewish Tiberias family while eating dinner. Seven-year-old Eliesar Turjeman died as a result.