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At 09:14 25/11/09 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: > >http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5 Although rather interesting, I didn't see the point of posting this link. When I went ahead and read the article (by Jeffrey Herf) I was annoyed and about to write a rebuttal. Then I saw that there already was a thorough rebuttal (by Richard Wolin, a qualified scholar) in the link underneath it, so I won't spend my own energy. Most reprehensible in the article by Herf (and apparently a primary theme of his book, judging by Wolin's rebuttal) is his attempt to provide the supposed "link" that justifies the idiotic term "Islamo-fascism": "But the formulation of Nazi propaganda during World War II and its dissemination stand as a decisive episode in the development of radical Islamism." Apparently he thinks that ideas planted by the Nazis needed some 40 or 50 years to smoulder before sprouting the present Islamic fundamentalists. And he further insinuates that anti-semitism is a primary component of Islamic fundamentalism, as the Zionists would like us to believe. He further reveals his bias in this regard: "In the first months after the war, as the scope of the Jewish catastrophe in Europe was being revealed, Arab and Islamic radicals showed no sign of reconsidering their hostility to Zionism." Right. The Palestinians whose land was being gobbled up by Europeans with the purpose of recolonizing that land after the British would leave, were supposed to give up that opposition because of the news that in a different continent there had been a genocide against members of the same religion. Finally he goes on to quote (as the Israelis love to) from the Hamas charter which indeed includes some very anti-semitic language. Again he conveniently ignores that Hamas has, in practice, renounced such positions, written about 20 years ago I believe, under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood which spawned Hamas (along with covert aid from Israel). And anyway it doesn't have anything to do with the struggle of Hamas and the Palestinian nation against Israel, again unless you accept Israel's claim that anti-zionism is anti-semitism. For a more current position of Hamas regarding the Holocaust, see this article written by Bassem Naeem, the minister of health and information in Gaza: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/bassem_naeem/2008/05/hamas_condemns_the_holocaust.html Hopefully the points I made are not controversial among the members of this list, and I question what's new about the Herf article (and book). Seems like just more of the same Islam-bashing that is used to deflect attention from the crimes of Israel in the present. - Jeff ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
