Posted by David Bernstein: Fisking Eric Alterman: Alterman has a [1]new column in the Nation, attacking Cathy Young for criticizing his insipid defense of the British Muslim Affairs Council boycott of Holocaust memorial ceremonies. A Fisking follows (and here's Young's [2]most recent take): Young's attack on me shared some of these bizarre qualities. She seized on a brief [3]blog item I wrote on Altercation.msnbc.com, in which I noted the insensitivity of demanding that Arabs attend Holocaust remembrance ceremonies that (of course) made no mention of what many Arabs believe to be the Holocaust's connection to what they consider their own "catastrophe"--namely, the founding of the State of Israel.
It was the British Muslim Affairs Council that boycotted the Holocaust ceremony, not "Arabs." I don't have exact figures, but it seems pretty obvious that most British Muslims are from the Indian subcontinent, not Arabs. And if the Arabs (and/or Muslims) think that the founding of the State of Israel is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, that's grounds for condemnation, not understanding. Indeed, the [4]reason given for the boycott was Israel's "genocide" against the Palestinians was not also commemorated, which is a horrible and inaccurate calumny against Israel (which, if it actually wanted to commmit genocide against the Palestinians certainly has the capacity to do so, and instead kept even the water and electricity flowing to the West Bank and Gaza and the height of the suicide murders). Is it insensitive to point out a blood libel? Is it insensitive to ask that the victims of the Holocaust not be used to score political points against Israel? Is it insensitive to ask British Muslims to see Holocaust victims as human beings, and not representatives of the "Zionist enemy"? Young distorted my argument to accuse me of anti-Semitism and self-hatred, using an ellipsis to make it appear as if I were describing the founding of the Jewish state as a "catastrophe" rather than attributing that view to Palestinians and their Arab supporters. Alterman wrote in his original piece: "I'm a Jew, but I don't expect Arabs to pay tribute to my people's suffering while Jews, in the form of Israel and its supporters -- and in this I include myself -- are causing much of theirs." "The Palestinians have also suffered because of the Holocaust. They lost their homeland as the world�in the form of the United Nations�reacted to European crimes by awarding half of Palestine to the Zionists. They call this the �Nakba� or the �Catastrophe.� To ask Arabs to participate in a ceremony that does not recognize their own suffering but implicitly endorses the view that caused their catastrophe is morally idiotic." Once again, Alterman confuses Arabs with Muslims. And the idea that "Israel and its supporters" are causing "much" of Arabs' suffering in a despotic, corrupt, and poor region where Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was more or less par for the course, is absolutely absurd. Not to mention--and I'm sorry to have to consistently repeat this--that the suffering of the Palestinians is largely self-inflicted, in the sense that they first refused to recognize Israel's right to exist for forty years, starting with the U.N. patition plan of 1948, and when they purported to change their collective minds, Arafat was ultimately unable to exchange the rifle for the olive branch (not to mention that the Arab states decided to use Palestinian refugees as a political tool, rather than resettling them). In any event, plenty of Jews, including me, recognize that the Palestinians have indeed suffered, self-inflicted or not. So why can't a Muslim group, as a representative of a great religious tradition, recognize one of the great horrors of world history, which, after all, happened to people. And how exactly is commemarating Holocaust victims "implicitly endors[ing]" any "view" other than that the Holocaust happened and it was a terrible tragedy? Unless Alterman wants to defend the rampant Holocaust denial in the Arab/Muslim World. She went even further, insisting that by acknowledging that Palestinians and their supporters perhaps had reason to be less than thrilled with the creation of Israel, I was actually--I kid you not--blaming "long-dead Holocaust victims" and arguing that "every Muslim is justified in viewing every Jew as the enemy." (In fact, the item in question spoke of Arabs, not "Muslims." Neither Young nor her editor, Nick King, appears to understand the difference.) We've already established that its Alterman, not Young, who doesn't know the difference between Arabs and Muslims. And yes, Alterman did imply that every Muslim is justified as viewing every Jew as the enemy. Were it not for the fact that the approximately 474,845 people who read the daily Globe now consider me an anti-Semitic, self-hating Jew, the episode would be ridiculous. Young describes herself as a "nonobservant Jew." She sure got the nonobservant part right. A former girlfriend of Wall Street Journal right-winger John Fund--which may or may not explain everything--Young has no profile whatever in Jewish affairs, Middle East debates or discussions of anti-Semitism. Good to know that only "observant Jews" are allowed to write about anti-Semistm. And the ad hominem about John Fund, is priceless, as we'll see below. Your columnist, on the other hand, is not only a pretty serious Jew--bar mitzvah, educated in Israel, lights candles on Friday night, goes to shul, sends the kid to Hebrew school, contributes to the Forward, etc.--but has been writing on Israel and anti-Semitism, speaking in synagogues, minoring in Jewish studies during doctoral work, etc., since first publishing on anti-Semitism at Yale, in, um, the Boston Globe twenty years ago, when he was the paper's stringer there. (The piece was deemed so sensitive to Jewish concerns, I received a congratulatory letter from none other than Martin Peretz, who invited me to contribute to The New Republic.) Well, if Martin Peretz praised you twenty years ago, I guess you can never write anything asinine about Jews in the future. ..... The paper's own ombudsman, meanwhile, termed Young's column "ad hominem" and "not worthy of an opinion page where readers expect (and usually get) thoughtful analysis and insight." Ad hominem, you mean, like mentioning a writer's ex-boyfriend as something "which may or may not explain everything"? Whether she sought payback for what I've written in The Nation about her ex-boyfriend or merely to silence anyone who expresses sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, the result of Young's clumsy slander is to aid the cause of anti-Semitism by revealing the political motivation of those who use the accusation as nothing more than a convenient ideological weapon. Ah yes, I know lots of people who go on vendettas to avenge their exes. Right. And what was that quote about ad hominem again? As for "expressing sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians," Alterman didn't simply do that, he suggested quite strongly that if one sypathizes with the Palestinians, one shouldn't express any sympathy for Holocaust victims, because the plight of the Palestinians is their "fault"--yes, long-dead Jews should be blamed for whatever sins their co-religionists later committed against Arabs. That may or may not qualify Alterman as engaging in Jewish anti-Semitism, but it certainly is unbelievably stupid. If Alterman wants to do himself a big favor, he would at least stop calling attention to it, and, better yet, acknowledge that his initial remarks were incredibly wrongheaded. References 1. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050328&s=alterman 2. http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/02/alterman_on_the.shtml 3. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6861528/#050125 4. http://www.solpics.com/2005/01/british-muslims-to-miss-holocaust.htm _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
