{"id":71336,"date":"2019-06-25T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=71336"},"modified":"2019-06-25T06:14:56","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T04:14:56","slug":"02-05-40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=71336","title":{"rendered":"How the Israeli Left Lost It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>How the Israeli Left Lost It<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Edward Alexander<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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A BDS protest in front of Carnegie Hall. Photo: Liberate Art.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Review of The Crack-Up of the Israeli Left by Mordechai Nisan,\u00a0Canada: Mantua Books.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen It comes to defaming Jews, the Palestinians are\u00a0pisherkes<\/em>\u00a0[pipsqueaks] next to\u00a0Ha\u2019aretz.\u201d \u2014\u00a0<\/em>Philip Roth,\u00a0Operation Shylock<\/em><\/p>\n

When the German Parliament, in spring of this year, declared, by a large majority, that the BDS movement is an antisemitic campaign in direct line of descent from the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses and products, the most fierce and intemperate attack on the Germans (for pointing out the obvious) came from prominent figures in Israeli journalism and academia.\u00a0Ha\u2019aretz,\u00a0<\/em>long ago labelled by Steve Plaut (Israel\u2019s Jonathan Swift) \u201cthe Arab paper written in Hebrew,\u201d led the charge against the German parliamentarians for coming to the support of their country. They were joined by more than 60 deep thinkers who argued, in an online petition, that the \u201camalgamation\u201d of calls for boycotts with antisemitism \u201cis wrong, unacceptable and a threat to Germany\u2019s democratic foundation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While some of the signatories \u2014 who included well-known professors from universities in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Beersheba \u2014 may dislike BDS a bit, \u201cwe all reject the fallacious claim that the BDS movement as such is anti-Semitic [sic], and we defend every person and every organization\u2019s right to support it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

recomended by: Leon Rozenbaum<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\n\"\"Israelis of this sort are the primary subject of Mordechai Nisan\u2019s new book,\u00a0The Crack-Up of the Israeli Left,<\/em>although he also excoriates numerous \u201cforeign Jewish Leftists\u201d and their non-Jewish allies. He pays particular attention to the dogmatism and dictatorialness of the anti-Zionist leftists in academia, cousins of the Philistines whose despicable antics today roil the campuses of Yale and NYU and Oberlin and scores of other deeply troubled places.<\/span><\/p>\n

The domination of Israeli campuses by leftist faculty is coextensive with the history of the Zionist enterprise. Nisan suggests, for example, that the Revisionist sympathies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s father Benzion Netanyahu probably explain why the foremost historian of medieval Spain spent his academic career in Ithaca, NY (Cornell) rather than Jerusalem (Hebrew University). A less well-known example might explain the strenuous though unsuccessful opposition, during Brandeis University\u2019s early years, to granting tenure to Marie Syrkin, a major figure in the Zionist movement as well as a distinguished poet and essayist. Among her colleagues were the non-Zionist Irving Howe and the anti-Zionist Herbert Marcuse.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nisan knows that intellectuals in countries other than Israel have often tended to adopt the motto \u201cthe other country, right or wrong.\u201d But they do not generally arise within 50 years of a country\u2019s founding, and in no case have they cultivated their \u201calienation\u201d in a country whose \u201cright to exist\u201d is considered an acceptable subject of discussion among otherwise respectable people and nations. Midge Decter put the matter shrewdly in May 1996: \u201cA country only half a century old is not supposed to have a full fledged accomplished literary intelligentsia. \u2026 This is an extravagance only an old and stable country should be allowed to indulge in.\u201d On May Day, 1936 the Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson angrily asked, \u201cIs there another people on earth whose sons are so emotionally and mentally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape and robbery committed by their enemies fills their hearts with admiration and awe?\u201d Nisan locates this perversion on the Israeli Left, and especially its professoriat.<\/span><\/p>\n

The heart sinks, the mind reels to learn that the odious doctrines of \u201cdiversity\u201d and multiculturalism (a euphemism for cultural deprivation) have spread from American universities to Israel, where the institution whose very name means \u201cout of many, one\u201d pursues its opposite: race-thinking. Nisan cites a notorious recent example, much beloved of feminist Israel-haters: \u201cOne of the most weird and morally staggering innovations at the Hebrew University, was a student\u2019s sociological research on Israeli soldiers who, despite the alleged wicked occupation of the territories, refrain from raping Palestinian women. The researcher concluded that Jewish soldiers were racist and exclusivist in refusing the opportunity to exploit Arab women as sex plunder.\u201d To this does race-thinking come.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Crack-Up<\/em>\u00a0is an openly partisan book. Nisan dons no masks, and immediately reveals his sympathies in the book\u2019s dedication. \u201cDedicated to the memory of all the Israeli victims of savage Palestinian terrorism, who were callously betrayed by treasonous and defeatist policies, and to all the many hundreds of Israelis slaughtered and maimed with the launching of the delusional Oslo peace process in 1993.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nisan describes, plausibly yet perhaps imprudently, his \u201cown unpleasant encounters with a few Hebrew University professors, who were my ostensible colleagues \u2026 and demonstrated adversarial demeanors.\u201d A friend of mine who taught at Mount Scopus\u2019 Truman Institute for Peace once told me he was \u201cthe only Jew there\u201d; and he later fled to Oxford, that much older home of \u201clost causes, forsaken beliefs, impossible loyalties.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nisan lays primary blame for the oppositional attitude of Jewish intellectuals upon what the great novelist Aharon Appelfeld called \u201cantisemitism directed at oneself.\u201d But Nisan lists baser motives as well: \u201cIt is good business to be a leftist. You get funded from foreign antisemites, you get to travel around the world, speak on distinguished panels, enjoy extensive media coverage, and receive praise from a variety of prominent people and noteworthy organizations. Fame, though short-lived, is an attractive commodity, though tarnished by infamy forever.\u201d
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Edward Alexander is the author of numerous books, among them Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew and Jews Against Themselves.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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How the Israeli Left Lost It Edward Alexander A BDS protest in front of Carnegie Hall. Photo: Liberate Art. Review of The Crack-Up of the Israeli Left by Mordechai Nisan,\u00a0Canada: Mantua Books. \u201cWhen It comes to defaming Jews, the Palestinians are\u00a0pisherkes\u00a0[pipsqueaks] next to\u00a0Ha\u2019aretz.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Philip Roth,\u00a0Operation Shylock When the German Parliament, in spring of this year, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71336"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71350,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71336\/revisions\/71350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}