Soccer Dad

Walt's moral disneyland and other stupid academic tricks

I recently refered to Charles Krauthammer's 1988 column "The Mideast as Moral Disneyland" in which he criticized those who passed judgment on Israel speaking of false concern for Israel's moral well-being. Well there are others who live in similar moral Disneylands when it comes to the Middle East. One of those is Stephen Walt - he of Walt and Mearsheimer infamy - who is now blogging at Foreign Policy. One of his first posts is titled What if Egypt, Jordan, and Syria had won the Six Day War? (via memeorandum) in which he posits that the only reason we treat Hamas as a terrorist organization is because they're Muslims. If they were Orthodox Jews, he appears to be arguing, the United States would understand their plight and excuse their violence. Yes, that's his argument.

Christian Brose throws Walt's fantasy scenario back at him and essentially says that if the Orthodox Jews were doing what Hamas was doing , then they'd be terrorists. Implicitly, he's sayng that Walt's analogy isn't even correct. Michael Goldfarb dismisses the scenario.

There is, however another rebuttal. The scenario Walt more or less describes, happened in 1948 not 1967. And it wasn't that the Arab world won the war, but that they used Israel's victory as an excuse to ethnically cleanse their countries of Jews. Hundreds of thousands Jews - likely more than the number of Araba who left their homes - were forced from their homes in Arab lands. But instead of being kept homeless in order to preserve a grievance, the Jews who were rendered homeless went to Israel which absorbed them into their society. The Jews who were expelled from their homes and their possessions stolen from them, did not turn to terror, but to helping to build the fledgling state. Had the Arab world been as responsible, there would be no Arab-Israeli conflict today. But the narrative of the dispossessed Palestinians served a purpose: their plight could be exploited to undermine Israel.

Essentially Walt's whole scenario isn't so much an academic exercise but a transparent attempt to legitimize Hamas.

Ross Douthat describes Walt's (and Mearsheimer's) crowning achievement like this (while allowing they might have a good idea at the center of their article)

I admit to some professional bias here, since The Israel Lobby opens with a none-too-veiled insinuation that the Atlantic, which commissioned the original essay and then declined to publish it, did so out of fear of a potential backlash from the Jews the Israel Lobby. I wasn't privy to the editorial decision-making surrounding the piece, so I'm speaking only for myself when I say that we almost certainly rejected the essay because it was lousy - because the analysis it provided on a subject of great moment was indefensibly slanted and wrapped in frankly conspiratorial thinking.

Alas, given his recent contribution, "lousy" is letting him off easily. HIs intent here is malicious. I know that Walt claimed to be appalled by the endorsement he received from David Duke. But that's because Duke has a bad name. Walt (and Mearsheimer) agreed to an interview with Robert Fisk, who is no less vile than Duke (even if he's more acceptable in some circles because he's English) and with Walt's recent foray into alternate history, I think it's safe to say that they're well beyond "lousy." "Hateful" might be a better adjective.

But academic apologists for Hamas are, unfortunately, not as rare as one might hope. There's Joseph Massad.

From Massad's faculty page at Columbia we learn:

Moreover, the lie that the film propagates claiming that I would equate Israel with Nazi Germany is abhorrent. I have never made such a reprehensible equation.

Well things have changed, or Prof. Massad was lying because lately lefties have been enjoying his exposition at Electronic Intifada, The Gaza Ghetto Uprising. (via memeorandum, Mere Rhetoric) In case the title doesn't tell you, he profanes the Holocaust by reproducing the famous picture of Nazi soldiers pointing their guns at a little Jewish boy. The article is not in any way academic as it quite explicitly compares Israel to Nazi Germany and the Palestinian Authority to the Judenrat. Massad is quite clearly a supporter of Hamas and morally deficient. When it's proven that the Nazis were providing medical help to the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, then, maybe, he'll have a case. But until then he is simply a raving antisemite, who by virtue of his temperament should be unfit to be teaching others. He is simply a propagandist, not a scholar.

And, of course it's a bit inconvenient to accuse Israel of being Nazis, when the folks you support believe that Jews should be exterminated.

Ron Rosenbaum notes:

In other words, Hamas is not committed merely to the political goal of expelling Jews from the land of Israel but to what they believe is a sacred religious goal of exterminating all Jews everywhere behind every tree in creation. (I'm not pinning any hopes on "the Gharqad tree"). I'd suggest those who deceive themselves into believing Hamas is just another Palestinian rights group, maybe a little on the extreme side, read the whole Bostom article. The exterminationist anti-semitism of Hamas is more excessive than Hitler's.

Or as Jonah Goldberg observes:

Perhaps one reason Israel fails at genocide is that it isn't interested in genocide? That would explain why Israel warned thousands of Gazans by cellphone to leave homes near Hamas rocket stockpiles. It would clarify why, even amid all-out war, it offers aid to enemy civilians. It would even illuminate the otherwise mysterious clamor from Israelis for a viable "peace partner."

But no. For millions of Israel haters, the more plausible explanation is that the "defiant" Palestinians have miraculously survived Israel's determination to wipe them out.

Meanwhile, calls for the complete extermination of Israel are routine. The Hamas charter, invoking the fraudulent "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as justification, demands the destruction of Israel. Indeed, Hamas exists solely because it is dedicated to the complete obliteration of the "Zionist entity." Remove that "principle" and Hamas is meaningless.

A sick mixture of Holocaust envy and Holocaust denial is the defining spirit of Hamas. Indeed, Holocaust denial passes for a scholarly pursuit not just in Gaza but throughout much of the Arab and Muslim world.

And not just in the Arab and Muslim world, in Columbia University too.

But Walt and Massad are part of a bigger problem. And that's something that Jeffrey Goldberg refers to as the The World's Pornographic Interest in Jewish Moral Failure.

I'll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble -- and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I've seen in my life. And it's typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they'd learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people.

True Walt and Massad are not doing what the gunmen described by Goldberg, did, but they provide the (im)moral background to make such exercises palatable or even acceptable. There's a need to paint Israel as an awful villain to justify Palestinian terrorism and Walt and Massad and their fellow travelers are quite happy to perform the task.

Instapundit attributes the willingness to demonize Israel as cowardice. I don't agree, for many people, it's a shrewd professional move. Certainly Walt's academic stock has risen in the past four years.

Note: Just in case Prof Massad attempts to erase the record, here's a screenshot of the quoted text, courtesy of Meryl.

Crossposted on Yourish.