Kudos to Ms. Hodgkins for addressing the complexities of any debate dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict. (Jan. 29) In the same issue, Mr. Mohamad Alam repeats his quarterly diatribe against Israel. His letter is entitled “Freedom for Palestine,” which is already misleading since there has never existed an independent Arab state with recognized borders called Palestine. Regardless, Alam likes to cite commentaries by “recent Israeli historians” to support his points.
The individuals mentioned are Benny Morris, Tom Segev, Ilan Pappe, and the Israeli “human rights” group B’tselem. Who are these “historians?” Definitely not mainstream Israeli scholars. Established historians call Alam’s “historians” post-Zionists. Specifically, the post-Zionists are a fringe group at the far left of the Israeli academic community, consisting of self-proclaimed “New Historians.” It is recognized in Israel and elsewhere that this group represents a political ideology and accepts admitted falsehoods as historical evidence. Pappe has been designated as falsifier of facts. His work that is based on a thesis of his student Teddy Katz has been proven as a lie. Katz admitted in court that his anti-Israeli thesis has been fabricated. Regarding the “historian” Morris-Professor Karsh of King’s college has demonstrated in a seminal study that “Morris is engaged in 5 types of distortions: he misrepresents documents, resorts to withhold evidence, makes false assertions, and rewrites documents.” Segev (a journalist) and B’tselem belong to the same group who bent all standards of objectivity to demonstrate the “unjust and immoral” nature of Zionism and the state of Israel.
Readers should also keep in mind that in 1948 to the early 50s 900,000 Jews had been ethnically cleansed from Arab countries after a series of pogroms, lootings and hangings. One should also remember the 10,000 Israelis who struggle everyday with horrific injuries sustained during waves of Palestinian terrorist attacks deliberately aimed at civilians. Injuries include nails and pieces of metal puncturing organs and severe burns of faces and limbs.
In her letter, Hodgkins observes that “few other issues of contemporary concern seem quite so fraught with personal connected news and communal pain.” She is correct. The question of course is why the ethnic war massacres in Rwanda (900,000 casualties), the civil war in Sudan (over a million casualties), massacres of Kurds in Iraq, or Chinese in Indonesia or the usurpation of Tibet by China are not regarded as worthwhile issues of “contemporary concern.” The disregard of these conflicts by the media and the academic community could even be considered as a potential dissertation topic at the Ph.D. program of the Fletcher School of Law in Diplomacy.
– Samuel Rabino is a professor of marketing in the college of business.
