To counter today’s op/ed (linked below), a quick rundown of what Nakba Week gave us:
-Joseph Massad explaining that “the Nakba began in 1881,” as if Jews fleeing the Russian and Polish pogroms of that year did so in order to dis-posses Palestinian Arabs–a slander not-so-vaguely reminiscent of the old anti-Semitic canard that the Jews encouraged the Holocaust in order to obtain some pretext for laying Palestine to waste.
-Gil Anidjar going on off on a barely-coherent tangent about Zionism being “the internalization of Jewish self-hatred.” Yes, and Palestinian nationalism is internalized self-hatred as well, right?
-Saif Ammous callously referring to the celebration of Israeli independence as “phony,” and condemning a pro-Israel group’s attempt at outreach and dialogue (however superficial) as “racist.”
Anti-Zionism is just about the only intellectual position I can think of that holds the destruction of a single political entity as its organizing principle. As this past week reveals, it marries the worst of antiquated, right-wing pan-Arabism (for instance, Massad’s rehash of the old Nassarite conspiracy theories)Â with the worst of post-identitarian utopianism (for instance, Anidjar’s rather condescending replacement of 100 years of Zionist thought with a cute half-sentence of crude psychoanalysis. Keeping in mind that he teaches a class called “Freud and Derrida”…), then insists on applying the toxic mix to a country whose legitimate political sovereignty is recognized by a vast majority of the countries on earth.
Nakba week was characterized by this ideological incoherency on the one hand, and the kind of cheap intellectual thuggery practiced by Massad, Anidjar and Ammous on the other. It was a week of shallow anti-Israel hysteria–successful for those who are already hysterically anti-Israel, a non-event for everyone else.
Then again, this probably had more to do with shaming the campus’s Zioinsts than with winning ideological converts. Let this post serve as proof that they failed.
Indeed, this post really is conclusive proof that they failed! If some twat writes soemthing on some college blog, then it must be true. Therefore, they failed.
Wow, even for a rabid Zionist, you’re still pretty stupid.
And the reality is that the hundreds who attended Nakba Week events will verily disagree wiht your idiotic conclusions.
Said Jimmy,
On May 2, 2008 at 2:37 pm:
well done proving armin’s points - that ad hominum attacks somehow serve as valid intellectual statements in the circus of hate that is anti-zionism.
Said Jimmy,
On May 2, 2008 at 3:45 pm:
[…] excuse me for sounding trite, but neither violence in physical, in symbolic, or in verbal (or even here) form will ever constitute a step forward. Of course, one can hope that history’s famous […]
Said Camping@Butler209: Why can’t we all just get along? …and more Butler scumbags » The Commentariat | SpecBlogs.com,
On May 2, 2008 at 11:20 pm: