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Posted in: Massad gets tenure at Columbia
06/30/09 12:46 PM
As you can see, this is somebody whose intellectual mentors on subjects like the Middle East and the Holocaust include "academic giants" like Paul Findley, Lenni Brenner, and Norman Finkelstein. That Massad would even cite such non-accredited fringe individuals as his _key_ sources in academic journal articles boggles the mind. That he would opine about subjects about which he has no understanding (like the Talmud, or world Jewish culture) is stunning. That his book on gays in the Middle East would find a proud place on Ahmadinejad's shelf is shocking. And his use of inflammatory but fraudulent quotations of certain prime ministers (and his refusal even to correct the record explicitly) belies his claims of academic professionalism---isn't that academic misconduct? The fact that anyone is seriously even considering granting Massad a tenure position at an Ivy League university is almost too absurd to imagine, and is clearly a function of ideological politics. And yet people are suggesting with a straight face that he is being _denied_ tenure because of politics? Absurd. Has anyone considered the possibility that Massad is just a second-rate, ideological, academic wannabe who is only where he is right now because of academic back-scratching and because his views happen to be in vogue these days? And this is how he behaves _before_ getting tenure. Anyone wish to imagine what a headache he’d be for the university _after_ getting tenure? And yet the inexorable process toward tenure continues to roll on, unstoppably. Aren't there any human beings involved in this process who can stand up and say "Not on my watch"?
Posted in: Massad gets tenure at Columbia
06/30/09 11:44 AM
I have only one thing to add, and it's a must-see:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Massad
That should give you all a very broad sample of what kind of a guy Joseph Massad is.
Posted in: The view from a West Bank hilltop
06/25/09 03:02 AM
Um, wow. Full-on uber-right-wing Jewish wacko-ism, in concentrated form! Maybe JTA really ought to consider just scrapping these comment boards. They’ve become just another place for radicals and their apologists to rant and scream and gripe. Poll after poll shows that the vast, vast majority of us Jews in both American and Israel support evacuating the outposts and forcing the settlers into line with Israeli law. Majorities in both communities support an eventual two-state solution. So, other then getting an obviously (and highly) non-representative sample of Jewish opinion on important matters, a sample riddled with bile, with xenophobia, with homophobia, with Reform-hatred and sinat hinam, with illiberal, fanatical, fundamentalist, Arab-hating screeds that sing grand and brainwashed and apologistic songs about the glory of the radical violent youth in Israel, a sample of poisoned filth incarnate at the bottom of most JTA pages that chews with venomous teeth at the end of every article, what the heck good are these comment pages? If you want to broadcast to the world your love for people who would spit in the face of the actual hard-won Jewish state in favor of a cowboy fantasy in your “God-granted” Judea and Samaria, Jews who would for the first time in Zionism scream “Nazi” at the first suggestion that they move back into that Jewish state, then the Internet is a wide-open space for you to do so. Start a blog somewhere. There are soapboxes out there for everyone. But JTA, seriously, get rid of these cesspools, these breeding grounds for hate. It’s time to eliminate the comment boards, or at least start a policy of disabling them entirely in advance for any article that touches on these dog-whistles for lunatic extremists. (A lot of blogs are doing this now, for obvious reasons.)
Posted in: Israel wrestles with settler challenge
06/25/09 02:39 AM
Um, wow. Maybe JTA ought to consider just scrapping these comment boards. They've become just another place for radicals and their apologists to rant and scream and gripe. Poll after poll shows that the vast, vast majority of Jews in both American and Israel support evacuating the outposts and forcing the settlers into line with Israeli law. Majorities in both communities support an eventual two-state solution. So, other then getting an obviously (and highly) non-representative sample of Jewish opinion on important matters, a sample riddled with bile, with xenophobia, with homophobia, with Reform-hatred and sinat hinam, with illiberal, fanatical, fundamentalist, Arab-hating screeds that sing grand and brainwashed and apologistic songs about the glory of the radical violent youth in Israel, a sample of poisoned filth incarnate at the bottom of most JTA pages that chews with venomous teeth at the end of every article, what the heck good are these comment pages? If you want to broadcast to the world your love for people who would spit in the face of the actual hard-won Jewish state in favor of a cowboy fantasy in your "God-granted" Judea and Samaria, Jews who would for the first time in Zionism scream "Nazi" at the first suggestion that they move back into that Jewish state, then the Internet is a wide-open space for you to do so. Start a blog somewhere. There are soapboxes out there for everyone. But JTA, seriously, get rid of these cesspools, these breeding grounds for hate. It's time to eliminate the comment boards.
Posted in: The Kaddish debate continues
05/14/09 03:05 PM
Well, Yaakov certainly typifies the sinat hinam I've been talking about. Nice of him to put Rabbi Julie Schonfeld's title, Rabbi, in quotation marks, wasn't it? How respectful to someone who knows vastly more about Judaism than he does. What love he demonstrates. And telling her to work on the street, rather than as a rabbi? Yaakov is really showing that warm sense of equality, isn't he? He sure makes Orthodoxy look attractive to other Jews, doesn't he? You all know why people like Yaakov behave this way, don't you? It's because they're taught to have nothing but contempt for the non-Orthodox, their fellow Jews. That's what they learn in school, from their teachers, from their parents. They hear it again and again. They never question any of it. Eventually it becomes just "obvious" that they should speak to the non-Orthodox with arrogant and immodest condescension, with that familiar patronizing and superior-sounding tone. Some of them are even taught that those horrid "reformim" brought about the Holocaust. And these impressionable youngsters just swallow it all up, this contempt for other Jews. Why do they teach their children this tripe? Are they so insecure that they feel the need to attack other Jews in order to feel stronger, to feel better, and to help resist temptation? Say what you will about the Chabadniks, but they are eminently secure in their faith, and they never feel this overwhelming desire to put those "other" Jews in their place. What a direct violation of the law to love their fellow Jews Yaakov demonstrates. I'm sure Yaakov follows all the small laws to the letter. Why he and those like him ignore the bigger laws of Judaism, like the repeated commandment to love their fellow Jews, indicates either ignorance or hypocrisy. I'm sure, like the rest, he has twisted the law to love Jews to mean that only "his" kind of Jews deserve to be loved. That may be fine for him, but not for G-d. And it's not good for the Jews.
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