Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The death threat is emerging as a popular weapon in the effort to silence defenders not only of Israel, but of evidence-based scholarship. Not actual death threats. No, the tactic here is for Israel-haters who have come under perfectly legitimate verbal criticism for making up facts and distorting history to assert that they have received death threats. The gullible not only believe them, but accuse “those opposed to†the kind of Big Lies told by Nadia Abu El Haj of sending “death threats.â€
Nadia El Haj, as readers of this blog will recall, is the Barnard College professor whose sole book, Facts on the Ground, argues that the ancient Israelite kingdoms never existed. All those PaleoHebrew inscriptions are a “pure political fabrication,†not discovered but “created†by jingoistic archaeologists.
Small wonder that her book has come under severe criticism from academics who actually know some history.
Abu El Haj has made no public attempt to defend her work. Instead, in what appears to be an attempt to garner sympathy, she has complained that the heavy criticism of her work by historians, archaeologists and other academics has caused her to become the target of “death threats.â€
If true, this is terrible. But is it true?
The NYPD takes credible death threats very, very seriously. But where is the evidence that El Haj received a death threat, as opposed, that is, to an angry letter? Neither El Haj nor the college has responded to calls to produce evidence that an actual death threat has been received.
Excuse my skepticism as I hazard a guess that El Haj has received an intemperate letter or two. A woman who writes with fulsome approval when Muslim mobs tear down Jewish shrines might get a few angry letters.
And El Haj’s anti-Israel buddies have a pattern of complaining about faux threats.
A couple of years ago, in the wake of publishing a notorious article in which he called Jews "Gestapo apparatchiks" and demanded that Israel "must be dismantled," Columbia Professor Hamid Dabashi complained that he felt “physically threatened.†A graduate student had written him a critical letter , a letter that contains not so much as a hint of physical threat. Dabashi demanded that the university take “appropriate measures taken to protect my person from a potential attack by a militant slanderer. .†The Provost read the student’s letter and told Dabashi to grow up. “I very much doubt the New York City police would have any grounds for intervening in this matter.â€
Joel Beinin is a Stanford University Professor so notorious that the Stanford Review actually has a feature called the “Beinin Watch,†dedicated to documenting the professor’s “support of terrorist organizations and… spearheading (of) antisemitic practices. †at Stanford. Beinin has recently complained loudly of receiving a death threat from a journalist. Both the journalist and Professor Beinin are Jewish, a fact that is relevant because what the journalist actually said was "Just remember, Hitler killed those who betrayed their nation first because he said that if they betrayed their own, why wouldn't they betray me?" The Stanford police told Beinin to grow up.
Joseph Massad, an aggressively anti-Israel professor, was officially censored by Columbia for "angry criticism directed at a student in class because she disagreed.†He attempted to deflect attention from his own misconduct by claiming that he was the subject of death threats.
Massad never published either the death threat or any evidence that the police considered the threat credible. But he did get a lot of mileage out of making such an accusation. The Columbia Daily Spectator accused students who objected to Massad’s Israel-bashing of being responsible for threats to the professor’s life. The pro-Israel students were accused of “unleashing a monster" and of irresponsibly releasing “social forces†of the kind that might murder a professor. www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1722
Massad continues to teach that the ancient Hebrews did not speak Hebrew, that Zion is the Hebrew word for penis, and other material so silly that Massad’s scholarship has been called “crackpot.â€
Now Professor El Haj tells us that she has received death threats. Unless she produces a police report establishing that the threat is credible, cynics may be excused for suggesting that maybe, just possibly, she is attempting to deflect criticism of a book that the senior American archaeologist of the ancient Near East, Professor William Dever, has called “faulty, misleading and dangerous."
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Massad continues to teach that the ancient Hebrews did not speak Hebrew, that Zion is the Hebrew word for penis, and other material so silly that Massad’s scholarship has been called “crackpot.â€
Um, "zayin" *is* the Hebrew word for penis. It's just not the Hebrew word for Zion.
Maybe the death threats were by phone, in which case she or the police could arrange to have a recording device installed, or she can let the police know when a call comes in so they can trace it.
Joseph Massad does not know Hebrew. He does not teach Hebrew. He teaches Israeli politics. (Many find it outrageous that someone who does not teach Hebrew teaches Israeli politics.)
In the course on modern Israel, he has taught this false interpretation as a snide way of maligning Zionism.
Not death threats, but read this violent rhetorics towards a distinguished British lawyer who dares to defy the British boycotters' campaign:
From: Beverly XXXX [mailto:XXX@yahoo.co.uk]
Sent: 11 June 2007 11:06
To: Anthony Julius
Subject: The Boycott will Prevail
Dear Anthony,
It is difficult to imagine any argument any moral or humane being could use against the strongest possible form of boycott and protest against the aparthied and racist state of Israel. But then again you're a lawyer and therefore quite happy to defend anything and anyone for cash.
Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion but you've taken this a step too far by threatening your own country and I believe you are close to committing treason, be careful how you proceed.
The lobby may have the upper hand in the mainsteam media, but we're winning the media war and we will win in the long run, it's just a matter of time.
I suggest you reconsider your support to "Devastate & Bankrupt" British academia, I doubt it will help your Company or your career if people consider you a traitor to Britain. Believe me when I say this, it is exactly how you will be portrayed when the campaign is launched.
You talk about "Academic freedom" but only for Israeli's and what about just plain old "freedom" for Palestinians from collective punishment in the ghettos and mass open air gaols Israel has created?
I hope you think hard about what it means to be British and see sense before you're defeated.
Enjoy your day!
Beverley XXXX
London
Found on "Engage"
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/arti
cle.php?id=1115
___________________
"Zain" is Hebrew slang for penis. It has some provenance: It is the first letter in the word "zereg" (a small branch) which used to serve as a colloquial euphemism for penis. When that term became too lewd for using (sometime during the fifties), people referred to it by its first letter "za-in". Very much like American invoke the "F-word" instead of saying outrightly just: "f*ck'.
Dan Ben Amotz, an Israeli author, wrote a famous novel: "Lo sam Zian" which translated into: "Don't give a f*ck".
Massad must be a real ignoramus if he teaches his students that Zion is a penis. Bloody unbelievable!
I find it perversely ironic that a person who writes in her book that she is writing from a perspective which specifically “Reject(s) a positivist commitment to scientific methodsâ€, that is, a person for whom there is no such thing as an objective fact, has the chutzpah to call her book "Facts on the Ground".
I also find it unbelievable that after such a statement anyone could possibly take anything she writes or says seriously. And yet she is up for tenure. The "academy" needs to take a long, hard look at itself.
As for the "death threats", show your evidence or shut up.
It is the first letter in the word "zereg" (a small branch...
Ah, I hadn't known that -- thank you for the clarification! I'd wondered what the origin of that obviously non-biblical word was. (The person I learned the it from wasn't exactly a lexicographer...)
Joanne,
A death threat is serious whether received via phone, fax, or carrier pigeon.
The question is, did El Haj recive a credible death threat or merely a phone call from a critic of her scholarship, perhaps similar to the phone call received by Joel Beinin of Stanford.
If El Haj actually felt threatened, she ought to have reported the threat to the NYPD.
If a death threat was reported to the NYPD, there will be a record of it. And a record of the response of the NYPD. If such a record exists, President Shapiro shoud produce it. If it or other evidence of an actual death threat does not exist, President Shapiro has no business responding to critics of El Haj's scholarship like Phil Orenstein by accusing opponents of El Haj's brand of scholarship of making death threats.
Calling Zionists penis-worshipers is an old joke in anti-Zionist and possibly some non-Zionist high school yeshivahs.
I remember it from the 60s. If Massad does not know Hebrew, he is not likely to have come up with this pun, and I think we can be fairly certain that he did not attend a high school yeshivah.