[Dialogue] {Disarmed} Supporters of "Greater Israel" score another victory

[Jim Rippey]

Below are pertinent excerpts from an article disseminated today by Alternet.
The article details the well organized national campaign carried out by the
American boosters of the "Greater Israel" idea.  Among these are the very
influential people who encouraged the Bush administration into the war
against Iraq and are now agitating for attacks on Iran.  The full story is
available at 

http://www.alternet.org/rights/62324/

Jim Rippey in Bellevue, NE.

------------------The exerpts------------

America's Campaign to Smear Israel's Critics

By Salim Muwakkil <http://www.alternet.org/authors/2151/> , In These Times
<http://www.inthesetimes.com/> . Posted September 11, 2007
<http://www.alternet.org/ts/archives/?date%5BF%5D=09&date%5BY%5D=2007&date%5
Bd%5D=11&act=Go/> .  

In the U.S., scholars who contest the conventional wisdom about Israel all
too often lose their reputations -- and their jobs. 

DePaul University canceled courses taught by Norman Finkelstein, the
controversial political science professor known for his forthright criticism
of Israel, just a week before classes resumed in June. Finkelstein, who
taught at DePaul for six years, was denied tenure at the Chicago school but
permitted to teach for the one year remaining on his contract.

In late August, however, the university decided to axe him and pulled his
required books from the schools' bookstore. This was a break from the
academic tradition that grants a faculty member who is denied tenure one
last year (the "terminal year") in the classroom. Finkelstein initially
vowed to protest his suspension, but later reached an agreement (including a
monetary settlement) with DePaul to end his fight. However, even as he
announced the agreement, Finkelstein charged his tenure denial was due "to
external pressure resulting in a national hysteria."

Finkelstein's rough treatment followed a vigorous national campaign
initiated by right-wing supporters of Israel to taint his name. They
attacked Finkelstein for his scholarship, which has consistently excoriated
the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the deceitful
arguments of the Jewish state's uncritical supporters. And Finkelstein is
just one of many public figures currently under attack for contesting the
conventional wisdom about Israel.

Harvard law professor and avid Zionist Alan Dershowitz mounted a relentless
public campaign to have Finkelstein dismissed. Surely it is no coincidence
that Finkelstein's recent book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of
Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, is a sustained, well-researched
attack on Dershowitz and his ilk for their lurid distortions of history on
behalf of Israel.

DePaul's political science department and a college-wide faculty committee
overwhelmingly backed Finkelstein's tenure bid. Yet that was not enough to
shield him from the national campaign to punish him for his acerbic
criticism of Israel. An influential dean persuaded the tenure panel to
reject him for the style and tone of his scholarship rather than its
content..

..Finkelstein thus joins former president Jimmy Carter, NYU historian Tony
Judt, Harvard University professor Stephen Walt and University of Chicago
professor John Mearsheimer (the latter two are co-authors of a new book, The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy) whose forthright criticism of Israel
have earned them accusations of anti-Semitism.

Jimmy Carter is facing a firestorm of criticism from right-wing American
Jewish organizations for his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which
mildly condemned the Jewish state's occupation policies in the Palestinian
territories..

 

 

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