Apropos Of Nothing

Gosh, it’s been a while. How are you, gentle readers? I’ve been away from the blog for several reasons — preoccupation with the babies (they’re starting to crawl!), back trouble that’s made sitting at the computer an impossibility, and a new reluctance to obsess about things I can’t do anything about.

But you know me. A couple of things have happened in close succession that I don’t think I can stay silent about. I’m late out of the gate on both of them, but I can’t resist getting a thought or two off my chest.

Two things are on my mind: the killing by Palestinians of the three young sons of a political rival, and the publication of Jimmy Carter’s book labeling us an apartheid state. What drives me crazy about the horrific story about the killing of the kids (aged three, six and nine), aside from the the crime itself (which must surely be a new low even for them), is the way the media have painted it a botched assassination attempt. These guys picked up their automatic weapons and went to the boys’ elementary school, where they lay in wait and then opened fire on the car in full knowledge that — indeed, because – it contained the guy’s children. Murdering your rival’s children in an attempt to psychologically destroy said rival is a thug’s technique that we might hope went out with Titus Andronicus, but that is obviously alive and well among the Palestinians. The object was to kill the kids. If their father had been in the car, that would have been a bonus. Let’s cut the crap.

The disgustingness of this particular crime was brought into even greater relief for me by the almost concurrent furore that erupted over Carter’s ridiculous book. He seems to have made a prize jackass of himself this time, which is all to the good — he plagiarized maps from Dennis Ross’s book and apparently littered his text with so many lies and errors and bald inventions that the first executive director of the Carter Center and founder of its Middle East program can no longer stand to be associated with his name. What amazes me about the book is the spectacular chutzpah Carter demonstrates by daring to lecture us, or anyone, for that matter, on how to fix the Middle East. Jimmy Carter, with his supine response to the Iranian takeover of the U.S. embassy in 1979, is directly responsible for the emboldening of Islamist fanaticism. He is directly responsible for convincing the world’s Islamists that the U.S. is a paper tiger. He is directly responsible for the steady escalation of Islamist terror against the U.S. and all Western interests. I don’t know — his views on how to solve the Palestinian-Israeli problem lack weight somehow.

We’ve all always known about Carter’s bias, but it’s exceptionally vivid in view of his complete silence about Palestinian crimes even against each other. They can do no wrong in his eyes, and we can do no right. He even goes so far as to defend the snatching of Gilad Shalit by Palestinian terrorists, which is a bridge too far even for the most established Israel-bashers. He’s filled with horror at the wall, of course, and the way it interferes with the raising of Palestinian olives, but has nothing to say about the help it’s providing in the raising of Israeli children. An untold number of Israelis are breathing today, and I may be one of them, because the wall exists. It was obvious to all of us that the building of the wall would bring mountains of remonstrations down on our heads, but when the options are to put up with the sanctimonious pontifications of armchair geopolitical scientists with thin grasps on history, facts, or even reality or to go to lots and lots of funerals, the choice is easy. Jimmy Carter’s sensibilities notwithstanding, that wall needs to stand until we can have some reasonable assurance that the people on the other side of it are civilized human beings. As things stand now, when they can’t get at our kids, they kill each other’s. As Shania Twain says, that don’t impress me much.

This one stings.

Israel has been condemned by FIFA, the organization that governs international soccer. Now, we’re pretty used to condemnations around these parts, both just and (usually) otherwise. But this is ridiculous.

FIFA claims to be entirely nonpolitical — or such has been its excuse over the years on the many occasions when it has pointedly ignored extreme human rights violations, going back generations, that have involved soccer stadiums and players. Consider, for example, the following cases (all taken from a recent National Review article by Tom Gross), none of which elicited a response of any kind from FIFA:

1. Saddam Hussein’s son Uday had Iraqi soccer players tortured in 1997 after they failed to qualify for the 1998 FIFA World Cup Finals in France.

2. Uday, who was chairman of the Iraqi soccer association, had star players tortured again in 1998.

3. In 2000, following a quarterfinal defeat in the Asia Cup, three Iraqi players were whipped and beaten for three days by Uday’s bodyguards. The torture took place at the Iraqi Olympic Committee headquarters.

4. The Taliban used U.N.-funded soccer fields to slaughter and flog hundreds of innocent people who had supposedly violated sharia law in front of crowds of thousands chanting “God is great.” (Afghan soccer coach Habib Ullahniazi said that as many as 30 people were executed in the middle of the field during the intermissions of a single soccer match at Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium.)

5. Soccer stadiums in Argentina were turned into jails.

6. According to the International Red Cross, about 7,000 prisoners were detained (and some tortured) in Chile’s national soccer stadium after Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973.

7. Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov was murdered by a bomb explosion at Grozny’s Dynamo soccer stadium.

8. FIFA refused to criticize the decision to name a Palestinian soccer tournament after a suicide terrorist who murdered 31 people at a Passover celebration at the Park Hotel in Netanya in 2002. (At the tournament, organized under Yasser Arafat’s auspices in 2003, the brother of the suicide bomber was given the honorary role of distributing the trophies to the winning team.)

9. FIFA failed to condemn the suicide bomb at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa in October 2003 which injured three officials from the leading Israeli soccer team Maccabi Haifa.

But last week, as Gross puts it, “FIFA finally found a target worthy of its outrage, and leapt into action.” That target was us.

What could we possibly have done to stir FIFA out of its torpor? Hold onto your hats, people. We conducted an airstrike on an empty Gazan soccer field. Why? Because it has been appropriated for training exercises by Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, who have been sending Qassam missiles into Israel with the express intent of killing and injuring civilians since the withdrawal from Gaza.

In fact, the Israeli strike took place two days after the Palestinians sent a Qassam missile barrage into Karmiya, an Israeli kibbutz. With a certain poetic irony, the missiles landed in the kibbutz’s soccer field.

Needless to say, that attack was A-OK as far as FIFA is concerned.

The deputy general secretary of FIFA, Jerome Champagne, has publicly condemned us — an unprecedented act — for hitting the Gazan field, and flatly refuses to issue a similar condemnation against the Palestinians for their prior missile attack on the kibbutz. More than that, he has consulted with FIFA president Sepp Blatter on the “appropriate action” that should be taken against us. (Champagne has defended himself from charges of discrimination with the following incisive argument: his wife is Jewish, so he can’t possibly be biased against Israel. Glad we cleared that up.)

Naturally, Israeli soccer fans (and Israel is every bit as soccer crazy as every other country in the world, save the US) are appalled over this condemnation. As Gross points out, they have several excellent questions for FIFA:

Where is FIFA when anti-Semitic banners go up in European soccer stadiums, and there are chants from spectators about sending Jews to the gas? …Where…are the FIFA sanctions against the Arab or Asian countries that refuse to allow Israel to compete in Asia? …why has FIFA moved games from Israel because guest teams were afraid to come to Israel, but has never banned any other national teams from playing home games on account of local Islamic violence? Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey were allowed to continue playing matches at home.

Furthermore, FIFA has a long history of placidly ignoring the boycotting of Israeli athletes:

In February, Tal Ben Haim — the Israeli national soccer team captain, who plays his club soccer for the English Premiership team Bolton Wanderers — was banned from joining his Bolton teammates for their training matches in Dubai. FIFA pointedly ignored this…last week, another English club, West Ham, left their two Israeli players, Yossi Benayoun and Yaniv Katan, at home when they went to Dubai. FIFA naturally had nothing to say.

No one is expecting satisfactory explanations for any of this. FIFA is otherwise occupied right now encouraging psychotic Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend the opening of the World Cup in Germany in a few weeks despite his history of Holocaust denial (a crime in Germany) and openly expressed desire to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Blatter’s response to questioning on the Ahmadinejad question: “”We’re not going to enter into any political declarations. We in football, if we entered into such discussions, then it would be against our statutes. We are not in politics.”

Still, as Gross notes,

Not all is rotten in world soccer…Last week, Ronaldinho, the Brazilian superstar widely regarded as the best current player in the world, donated signed footballs and shirts to Israeli child suicide bomb survivors, saying he hoped his gifts would “warm the hearts of the children who have suffered so much.”

Thank you, Ronaldinho. We appreciate it more than you know.

British Jews have reason to be very uncomfortable today.

Yesterday, the Church of England voted to divest from all companies doing business in the occupied territories, the most prominent of which is Caterpillar. The vote was championed by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Though keen to punish Israel for what he terms its illegal actions, the Archbishop is notably without comment on the recent Palestinian election of Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to the total destruction of the State of Israel.

The divestiture is apparently intended to support Christians in Israel, who, according to Bishop of Chelmsford John Gladwin, are in “despair”. Gladwin rather blithely overlooks the evidence that most of the Christian Arabs’ plight is the result of Muslim persecution. No, it’s all obviously our fault, he claims — a view the synod had no difficulty swallowing, though they might have opened their minds a little had any alternative views been presented at the synod. Alas, a fair exchange of views was not to be: the vote was called after an hour, cutting off any opportunity for rebuttal or debate.

There have been the to-be-expected responses from British Jewish groups, but most encouragingly, a scathing criticism of the vote came from George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Disgusted by what he calls “a most regrettable and one-sided statement” that “ignores the trauma of ordinary Jewish people” in Israel who are victimized by Palestinian terror, he stated that the vote has made him “ashamed to be an Anglican.”

While the Church of England has termed its divestment decision “morally responsible,” Carey classifies it as a “one-eyed” response that “only rebukes one side” and shows the church’s “propensity to reduce complex issues to black and white.” His stand was supported by the Rt. Rev. Christopher Herbert, Bishop of St. Albans and chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, who called the synod at which the vote was held “unbalanced”.

The Post article cited above quotes Dr. Irene Lancaster, of the Center for Jewish Studies at Manchester University, as saying the vote represented “a very black day for Anglican-Jewish relations.”

“The Jewish community will have to reconsider their attitude to interfaith work with the Anglican community,” she went on. “The writing is on the wall for the Jews of Great Britain, 350 years after they settled here.”

Last week, the Lebanese army caught a boat loaded with weapons and long-range missiles headed for Israel (shades of the Karine A). The weapons were apparently intended for the use of either Hamas or the Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The boat departed Lebanon from Naher Al Bard, a Palestinian refugee camp near the southern port of Tripoli. There were four people on the boat as well, and they were detained by the Lebanese.

This action by the Lebanese is quite encouraging. It indicates an independence on the part of the Lebanese army from the desires of Hezbollah, and more speculatively, it might suggest an inclination among the Lebanese to take advantage of the Syrian collapse to reach out to Israel. That’s an extremely hopeful scenario, but not at all an impossible one.

Yesterday, during an anti-Israel rally in Teheran, election-hijacking Grand Panjandrum Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated baldly that Israel, otherwise known as the “disgraceful blot,” must be summarily “wiped off the face of the earth.” This sentiment, while startling, is hardly unprecedented: five years ago, then-President of Iran Hashemi Rafsanjani implored any Muslim nation with nuclear capability to hurry up and annihilate the Zionist scourge. The difference, of course, is that Iran is now very close to achieving its own nuclear ambitions.

Ahmadinejad claims that my family and I will only be vaporized if Israel has the temerity to preemptively attack Iran’s nuclear targets. He thus introduces a logical inconsistency into his argument. Either we are a vile cancer that must be lanced to reinstate the purity of Islamic lands — a colonialist, imperialist, Crusader-loving, Muslim-bashing tool of the American Satan that must be exterminated for the sake of pan-Islamic honor — or not. It confuses us Israelis, most of whom are pretty thoroughly convinced that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric about us is entirely honest, to be told that if we just sit quietly and let him get on with enriching all that uranium, we’ll be fine.

Well, it shouldn’t. Does Iran have nuclear weapons aspirations, notwithstanding its signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and protestations of peaceable intentions? Of course it does. (You can’t annihilate Zionist Entities with power stations.) Does the current Iranian administration contemplate, with a warm glow of satisfaction, the picture of an Arab world applauding Teheran for finally giving the Jews what they deserve? You bet. Does that administration balk at the thought of the destruction such an attack on Israel would provoke against its own cities?

Ah — now here we get to the interesting part. I believe that they do not. To my mind, the safer assumption is that although the Iranians are Shia and are thus spiritually distant from the Wahhabi, they have internalized a militant Wahhabist (read: Al-Qaedaesque) interpretation of Islam, which helpfully dictates that a Muslim who dies in the crossfire while Jews (or Americans, or infidels of any stripe) are being slaughtered gets right on the fast train to Paradise. They are honorary shaheeds, as it were. Wahhabist Islam — an extremely puritanical offshoot of Sunni tradition — also classifies fellow Muslims who refuse to fall in line with their interpretation of the Koran as non-believers and therefore killable, a distinction that might ultimately prove useful to the emphatically hard-line Iranian leadership. There is mounting evidence that the Iranians have overcome any squeamishness they might have had about cooperating with Sunnis for the sake of a common goal — they are, for example, providing infrared-triggered roadside bombs to Sunni “insurgents” in Iraq that are aimed at killing coalition soldiers. There it is again, that tiresome cliche: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The image of a black, smoking hole where Teheran used to be does not fill men like Ahmadinejad with trepidation — quite the contrary, I imagine. He will have ushered many thousands of deserving Muslims to their just reward, he will have put an end once and for all to the catastrophic historical mistake that was the State of Israel, and he will have ascended to an unprecedented level of pan-Islamic leadership — a highly pleasing state of affairs he will have ample opportunity to enjoy from his bunker in Mash’had, which, conveniently, is 1,000 kilometers from Teheran. I believe it is entirely specious to count on Muslim discomfort with havoc wreaked on other Muslims as a guard against a potentially catastrophic nuclear provocation. As Professor Salim Mansur puts it in a piece for the Center for Security Policy,

More Muslims have been killed by Muslims, more Muslims continue to be victimized by Muslims, and more Muslims are in danger of dying at the hands of Muslims than non-Muslims…

He cites a long list of examples:

…the actions of the military government of Pakistan against the people of former East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in 1971. This was a politically catastrophic event of genocidal proportions in the modern history of the Muslim world…the execution of an elected president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in 1979…the killing of Anwar Sadat; the repression of Palestinians inside Jordan in 1970-71; the sectarian strife in Lebanon during the 1970s; the seizure of the holy mosque in Mecca in 1979 and the violence that followed; the violence in Iran since 1979 between followers and opponents of the late Ayatollah Khomeini; the nearly decade-long Iran-Iraq war; the civil war inside Syria culminating in the Hama uprising of 1982 and its severe repression by Hafez Asad; the civil war in Algeria since at least early 1992; the unsettled situation in Afghanistan following the brutal rule of the Talibans. And then there is the case of Iraq.

True, these are primarily cases of active repression of Muslims by other Muslims rather than the creation of Muslim collateral damage by other Muslims, but I consider that a distinction without a difference. As Mansur notes, Muslims have not hesitated to splatter the entrails of Muslim children on the streets of Iraq along with those of American soldiers.

We cannot accuse Iran of concealing its intentions. Ahmadinejad is busy assisting chinless ophthamologist and international pariah Bashar al-Assad in constructing an “innovative” (yikes!) chemical warfare program, obviously intended to be directed at us. Iran is widely known to be a longtime sponsor of Hezbollah as well as a colorful variety of Palestinian terrorist groups. (Recall the Karine A, for example — the ship full of Iranian arms that Arafat, Israel’s late and lamented partner for peace, tried to dock at Gaza in 2002.) Iran also recently unveiled the now-operational Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which is capable of reaching my living room. Chemical weapons, shiploads of rocket launchers and long-range missiles have their charms, certainly, but they are very small potatoes to people who dream of towering over a new Arab world order. An Iranian nuke is only a matter of time.

So what are our options? In 1981, Israel obliterated Saddam Hussein’s French-built Osirak nuclear reactor (in a minute and a half, by the way, after flying 700 miles through Saudi and Jordanian airspace during daylight. Notwithstanding the universal condemnation expressed toward Israel for this disgraceful act, you could hear the sighs of relief echoing across the Arab capitals.) Although I expect all kinds of unlikely people are hoping we’ll take care of the Iranian threat in a similar way, I don’t think we can. For one thing, Iran is thought to have at least a couple of dozen nuclear facilities dotted all over the country. Some of them, reflecting what I believe to be the ruling cabal’s degree of concern for the welfare of the citizenry, are located in major population centers. An Israeli attack simply could not be surgically effective in the way the Osirak attack was, and it would provoke a devastating counterattack for which Saddam, with his single reactor, was not capable at the time.

The only option, unfortunately, is to wait for a provocation from Iran. Should such a provocation materialize, I don’t think Israel would hold back. Needless to say, I’m not in a position to say what Israel would consider to be a sufficient nuclear cassus belli. But I’d pay close attention to that chemical weapons program in Damascus. Iran is doing its best to ensure we all know who is behind it. If sarin gas devastates the population of Tel Aviv, I’d get the hell out of Teheran.

One of the most iconic images of ferocious Israeli evil is the famous photo of Muhammad al-Dura, a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy, lying dead in his father’s lap after being shot by the Israeli army during a battle at the Netzarim junction in the autumn of 2000. Over the years that have followed, the boy’s death has proved an extremely effective recruiting and motivational tool for Palestinian suicide bombers and other assorted Islamofascists.

When this incident hit the news, I remember hearing quiet comment that it had almost certainly been faked. When I inquired why the Israelis weren’t doing everything they could to expose the lie, I was told, again and again, that there was simply no point. Israel’s image was so bad that even an attempt to defend herself against such a grotesque blood libel would likely serve only to provoke further mistrust and contempt.

Fortunately, Nidra Poller refused to let the lie rest. In an explosive new piece in Commentary, she exposes the image for the fabrication it is. As she writes, the lie was so instantly effective at fomenting anti-Israel bias that even to express a doubt as to the image’s veracity was to declare yourself hopelessly deluded:

That the death of Muhammad al-Dura was the real emotional pretext for the ensuing avalanche of Palestinian violence—and a far more potent trigger than Sharon’s “provocative” visit to the Temple Mount—is attested by the immediate and widespread dissemination of his story and of the pietà-like image of his body lying at his father’s feet. Streets, squares, and schools have since been named for the young Islamic shahid. His death scene has been replicated on murals, posters, and postage stamps, even making an iconic appearance in the video of Daniel Pearl’s beheading. His story, perhaps the single most powerful force behind the Palestinian cult of child sacrifice over the last years, has been dramatized in spots on Palestinian television urging others to follow in his path, retold in a recruitment video for al Qaeda, and immortalized in epic verse by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

But is it true? Although serious doubts were immediately raised about the veracity of the France-2 news report, they were swept aside by the emotions it provoked and by the flare of violence in the last months of 2000. France-2 indignantly turned down all requests to investigate or even to help others investigate by releasing outtakes. To this day, many people believe that even to raise a doubt about the authenticity of the report is tantamount to denying the reality of the 9/11 attacks on New York City.

The depth of depravity and cynicism required to fabricate such a revolting lie beggars the imagination. But, as Poller argues, the Palestinians who enacted the scene are not the only ones at fault. The incident was disseminated, instantly and at no charge, to the world’s media by French TV. She concludes her article by asking: “What was the role of the government-owned French television network, which is to say the French government itself, in devising, implementing, and spreading this atrocious calumny, whose repercussions are with us to this day?”

It’s a compelling piece. Have a look at it.

(Via Melanie Phillips.)

This on-campus speech by a Lebanese Christian is notable for three reasons. First, the speaker expresses an extremely unusual public view of Israel for an Arab. Second, the speaker dares to use the language of morality – good, evil, barbarism – which much of the academic elite considers beneath contempt and the mark of a weak thinker. Third, the speech was delivered at Duke University, which has been guilty in the recent past of shameless pandering to Palestinian racist hate speech. I’m an alumna of Duke myself, and I was disgusted at the time by my (much-loved) alma mater’s craven cowering behind the morally bankrupt shield of “correctness”. I’m relieved that Duke is now giving voice to people like Brigitte Gabriel and hope to see more of the same on other US campuses. (Via Israpundit.)

Family is visiting from abroad so I’m unable to write about either of these items at length, but they leaped out of the headlines today. They can be filed under two categories: Encouraging and Terrifying.

Encouraging: There was an unprecedented public meeting today between the foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan. Pakistan was full of caveats and qualifications, but this is nevertheless an extremely positive development. Silvan Shalom is jumping out of his socks, and rightly so.

Terrifying: Of the many threats we hear around these parts, the threat – just reiterated – to kidnap soldiers is perhaps the most horrific. (Or perhaps it’s the most horrific if you’re the parent of an Israeli child.) The very thought of this idea — and the way our enemies refer to it as a “policy”, as though it’s perfectly legitimate — renders me quite incandescent with rage.

Not long ago, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice remarked that the withdrawal from Gaza must be only the beginning of Israel’s concessions to the Palestinians. Though the remark was couched in padding of praise for Israel, it raised some eyebrows, echoing as it did the language of Israel’s enemies even as settlers were struggling to disinter their loved ones from the cemetery at Neve Dekalim. The gracelessness of Rice’s timing, as much as the implicit warning in the message, caused alarm among those who fear that the Gaza withdrawal will be used as a precedent to cudgel Israel into far more dangerous concessions.

To these people I say: tirag’u, chevre. Take it easy. There are plenty of things to worry about at the moment – the inauspicious beginning of Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza does not augur well, to be sure – but Condi’s comment isn’t one of them. It’s worth examining, though, to give a glimpse into the method behind the current American relationship with Israel and the Palestinians.

There are two possible explanations for the remark. Either the Secretary was simply off message, or Bush and Rice are playing good cop/bad cop with Israel. If the first is the case, several subordinate questions arise. Was the remark deliberate? If so (and Rice strikes me as far too controlled to allow such a significant slip), should we infer a potentially hazardous split between Secretary of State and Commander in Chief? Was she, in other words, expressing the real attitude of the Department of State, putting Bush in a position roughly analogous to that of Truman before him with regard to Israel?

The widely popular perception of the American president as a bumbler with a bulldozer – a man too dim to formulate coherent arguments to support his positions, but who will cheerfully flatten anyone in his path who disagrees with his addled hunches – encourages one to see Rice’s remark as a fleeting revelation of the true face of a State Department hamstrung by the president’s delusional foreign policy. One might even speculate that Rice’s curiously automaton-like delivery bespeaks her reluctance to associate her own personality with the messages she is assigned to convey.

But the premise is wrong. Bush is many things, but a dolt is not one of them. (To the Tooting Station has an entertaining piece this week on the popular assumption of American presidential stupidity, by the way.) I believe Bush knows precisely what he is doing with regard to Israel, and Rice is with him up to the hilt. There is American strategy at work in the Gaza withdrawal as much as Israeli, obviously, and her comment reflects that strategy.

Condi’s words immediately put me in mind of James Baker III, Secretary of State under George Bush the Elder. (It was Baker who body-checked Shamir and the Palestinians into their historic photo-op in Madrid in 1991, setting in motion the eventual formal resuscitation of the PLO.) Baker’s tenure as advocate for Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement was notable for a curious feature: as far as he was concerned, we could all go to hell. There were many other factors at work, of course, but Baker’s scarcely-concealed contempt for both the Israelis and the Palestinians (particularly the Israelis) had its own motivating effect: neither party wanted to be responsible for their desertion by the Americans. His style contained not even a hint of the discomfiting whiff of supplication that would later characterize the efforts of Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton’s frequent-flying man on the job. Condi Rice’s words struck me as a more decorous version of the Baker approach: to remind the parties — in this case, Israel — that American patience is finite.

This position reassures the wider audience that the US is a broker for more than one side, and the granting of such reassurance is all to the good. The Americans are fully aware that words spoken to Israelis are destined for broader consumption, and it is in all our interests that they retain their credibility as mediators while we stumble toward some version of coexistence.

So I wouldn’t let Condi’s tactlessness worry you. As far as Israel is concerned, the good cop is still the guy in the Oval Office.

Efraim Karsh considers the roots of entrenched anti-Israel bias in the academy:

The issue is not whether professors should treat their students with due respect, as indeed they should, but whether they should be permitted, under the guise of academic freedom, to pass off personal bias and open political partisanship as scholarly fact…

…Not only is the academic intifada against the Jewish state thriving, the reigning terms of discussion it has introduced for understanding Middle Eastern reality have become perfectly normal, perfectly conventional, perfectly accepted in academic discourse…

Well worth reading. Have a look.