Some of the shortcomings and rather outrageous aspects of this story are encapsulated by the letter the American Jewish Committee (AJC) wrote to Macmillan. Among the points made by the AJC and other critics are.
1. No other form of nationalism is included in the three-volume encyclopedia. Only Jewish nationalism is addressed. That should immediately raise a red flag.
2. Noel Ignatiev has absolutely no track record of scholarship in Middle Eastern or Jewish studies. He has described Zionism as an "ideology of race" and scandalously promotes the canard of Zionist-Nazi "collaboration." This is hardly an impartial article on Zionism in what is supposed to be reference work.
3. In fact Ignatiev wrote a very similar article which appear on Counterpunch, a site known for its anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism [opposition to the existence of the Jewish state not just to its policies].
4. Apparently when the AJCommittee contacted Macmillan for an explanation John Hartwell Moore, the encyclopedia’s Editor in Chief, defended the entry by arguing that Jewish nationalism is racist because it’s Jewish.
5. In his earlier statements and in the article conflates Zionism and Nazism. Ignatiev claims that Zionism “shared the [Nazi] belief that the Jews were a racial community based on blood.” This. of course, is complete balderdash, if not worse. Zionism says nothing about Jews being a racial community based on blood. This is Nazi talk and has nothing to do with Zionism.
6. Since the author is known as a propagandist -- not a scholar -- opposed to Zionism. As Brian Henry, a Canadian author, has asked "If the editor concerned chose Ignatiev because of his prejudices, how many other entries in the encyclopedia might reflect the editor’s political agenda?"
There is an excellent in depth critique of this whole shameful episode here.
6 comments:
"No other form of nationalism is included in the three-volume encyclopedia. Only Jewish nationalism is addressed. That should immediately raise a red flag."
Exactly. As I've said so often before (but it seems no-one is listening), the Jewish people are again become targets of religiously incited hatred in much the same way they were hated in Christian Europe before and during the Holocaust, only this time the culprits are Islam and the politically correct (both Left and Right: those who oppose Jewish nationalism in favour of Islamically defined nationalism).
That it is protested and considered taboo by the Western academia and media for honest men and women to scrutinize the religion of Islam because of its violence and its overtly anti-Jewish shibboleths, because of the consequent anti-Jewish cultures these same shibboleths have effectuated around the world, should be an indication to all those who claim to be "experts" on the Nazi Holocaust that a second Holocaust is being stimulated by many of those political activists (both Muslim and non-Muslim) who were not satiated with the results of the first. How else could such brazen sciolists as Ignatiev and an excuse for empirical knowledge as his encyclopedia even exist if not for academically enshrined and sophisticated anti-Jewish hatred?
"I think it is clear, however, that while consensus among like minds may be the final arbiter of truth, it cannot constitute it." -Sam Harris
"Der oilem iz a goilem." The masses are asses. -Yiddish proverb
In my opinion, Zionism is best understood as the pre-1948 national movement of the Jewish people for self-governance in their ancestral and cultural homeland, the Land of Israel. After Israel became a state in 1948, Zionism is most often expressed as general support for the Jewish state, although a Zionist is not required to (and often doesn't) agree with every action the government of Israel takes.
According to Random House Webster's College Dictionary, Zionism is simply "a worldwide Jewish movement for the establishment and development of the State of Israel."
It is doubtful that any reasonable, fair-minded person aware of the history of the Jews and of the Middle East would be against the development of a modern nation in the Middle East safe for Jews to live in (assuming that person is not from a nation that is in a state of war with that nation). Furthermore, Zionism is a term that more accurately reflects a pre-Jewish state mentality than for identification with the State of Israel in the 21st century. Without a doubt, Israel practices racial discrimination, but then again so does every other government in the world preferring certain citizens more than others. Therefore, proponents of the "Zionism is racism" campaign should equally insist that Hindutva, Kemalism, and pan-Arabism are all racist or "undemocratic" ideologies.
It's a shame for Macmillan to have this book (Encyclopedia Of Race And Racism) published with this content.
Isn't singling out Zionism as the only form of nationalism to be described as racism just an update of the old trope of blaming antisemitism on the "Jewish insistence of setting themselves up as a different people with different customs?"
'Isn't singling out Zionism as the only form of nationalism to be described as racism just an update of the old trope of blaming antisemitism on the "Jewish insistence of setting themselves up as a different people with different customs?"'
Well said, Ian.
ARABISM = THE (mightiest) RACISM (today)!
The wild racist virus on a vicious campaign of burning all non-Arab ethnicities down, main victims include:
Kurds, Jews, Berbers, Persians, Asians, Africans.
See - http://geocities.com/jihadipedia/Arabism
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