Women at the Kotel

Every month a group of women go to the Kotel in Jerusalem to pray while wearing talitot (prayer shawls) in an area designated as all male. They are there to challenge the authorities' compromise decision to restrict women to one area only.  This month this demonstration made headlines the world over because one of the women was a sister of a celebrity:  Rabbi Susan Silverman, sister of the comedian Sarah Silverman.  The women were promptly arrested in front of media photographers.  No charges were laid, but the women were told not to go to the Kotel again for two weeks.  Here is the Jerusalem Post's coverage.

I belong to a Conservative synagogue in Brooklyn which lost no time to declare,  in a statement sent to all members, how proud it is of the arrested women, not least because one of those arrested is a former rabbi of the very synagogue in question.  

My response was, I believe, muted.  Here it is:

Women at the Kotel --

Compromise or Civil Disobedience ?

I must respectfully dissent from the sentiments expressed in [Synagogue] Connections (Feb. 14) concerning the Women of the Wall.

I agree that women should be able to pray at the Kotel on an equal footing with men.  The question is how to achieve this objective.

Basically, there are two sides to the story.  The appearance of women at the Kotel wearing tallitot, etc., is offensive to a many Orthodox Jews.  To them, it constitutes desecration.   Hence it is necessary, in the eyes of Israeli authorities, to fashion a compromise, one which takes into account the religious sensitivities of both the Orthodox and those of the more liberal Jewish communities.  The Israel Supreme Court has taken up the case on a number of occasions, and now the Israeli government has designated Natan Sharansky to help in working on the compromise.

At the moment, the authorities have designated a certain area of the Kotel where women can pray in full freedom.  To the Women of the Wall this is not enough, they apparently want equal access to the whole Kotel.  I sympathize with that demand, but, again, the issue is how to pursue the issue.

The Women of the Wall have chosen civil disobedience to assert their rights.  Civil disobedience obviously has a role in the face of intolerable oppression. But does the compromise worked out by the Israeli authorities constitute such intolerable oppression ? In my view, it does not.  The spectacle of people getting arrested at the Kotel gives rise to a world-wide press coverage that suggests oppression in Israel.  This suggestion is basically flawed.  For that reason,  rather than applaud the WotW for their civil disobedience we should urge them to seek the way of compromise and peaceful persuasion.

The Reform and Conservative groups that support the WofW are based, to a large extent, outside of Israel.  In my view, they do not adequately appreciate what the Israeli Supreme Court in this connection has called the minhag hamakom, the local custom.  The Jewish Old City of Jerusalem, religiously speaking, has been Orthodox for centuries, and those of us in the diaspora need to understand its sensitivities, without, of course, giving up our own convictions.

Finally, I cannot at all agree with the statement's suggestion that Israel has somehow failed to "honor all Jews."  The Israelis are struggling with the very difficult problem of religious/secular relations of which the Kotel problem is but a small aspect. The Israelis seek to find reasonable compromises.  I can find no merit in the suggestion that their handling of the Kotel issue constitutes a fundamental violation of human rights.

UPDATE:

For a careful analysis of the situation, please see the article by Rabbi Jeremy Rosen

Dystopia on Bedford Avenue -- Ct'd

(For an earlier installment of this series, see my 2011 blog on the subject)

It gets worse at Brooklyn College.  The Political Science Department is now a political action group against Israel, and City Hall is complicit.  This became clear last week when Poli Sci officially sponsored an agi-prop event at the  College with the connivance of the College's president and also that of the Mayor of the City of New York, 

For a description of the "BDS" event at Brooklyn College, see the ADL statement.

For a description of the "BDS" movement, see this video

Those of us (including most elected officials in Brooklyn) who criticized PoliSci's endorsement  stressed that we do not oppose the BDS event on campus;  what we oppose is the official imprimatur that the College, through its Political Science Department, has conferred on the event.  The situation is analogous to that of the Constitutional separation of church and state.  A public university may teach about religion, and it may allow student groups to practice religion on campus, but it may not officially sponsor or endorse sectarian religious practice.

Here are some documents on the controversy at Brooklyn College.

Many of us wrote to various officials at the College, stating each time that we do not oppose the event but do not want the College to sponsor it, and each time we got the same answer:  we must have freedom of speech, and therefore the Department's sponsorship must stand.  Therefore ? How and why is official College sponsorship necessary for freedom of speech, or any other kind of freedom ? The College officials act as if they hadn't heard the question;  they remain mum.  That isn't very smart, but it gets worse at City Hall.  

And indeed, the most zany performance was that of the Mayor of the City, Michael Bloomberg.  Here he explains why, in his view, Brooklyn College must be allowed to officially sponsor BDS:

“If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea,” he said in a news conference at City Hall.

Now our good mayor owns many homes in various parts of the world but apparently none in North Korea, so perhaps this gap in his holdings explains his opinion here. But with all that, is it plausible that the mayor, in the privacy of his own conscience, fails to appreciate the illogic of his pronouncement ?

Obviously, the College officials and the Mayor know the difference between freedom of speech, to which even the most hateful of groups are entitled, and official sponsorship, to which they are not. So when these officials play dumb, when they make believe that they cannot see any distinction, well, bad faith is the inescapable conclusion.

While College officials and the Mayor (and also the editorialists of the New York Times) all lend their complaisance to the hate-Israel movement, the same cannot be said of the learned professoriate  of the Political Science Department.  Here it is not a matter of complaisance or even mere complicity but one of activism in a political cause.

Let me say at the outset here that things could be even worse.  Some time ago I looked into a somewhat similar situation at an affiliate school of the University of Toronto, viz. the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).  As I reported in a number of postings then, one of the departments there was so politicized that many of the MA theses produced in it were crude and ugly pieces of propaganda.

The same cannot be said of Poli Sci, at least insofar as I was able to determine.

Unlike the situation at OISE, for which all theses are freely available on the internet, Brooklyn College makes it difficult for outsiders to consult the products of its graduate programs.  BC theses are not available on the internet, nor are they even cataloged.  They are kept at the Brooklyn College Library Archives, to which, in principle, the public is not admitted.  However, upon application by e-mail, I was granted permission to inspect MA theses and, I must say, was given every courtesy by the librarians.  I looked at all the PolySci theses completed within the last two years, and I am satisfied that they were, by and large, free of undue political bias.

Notwithstanding its apparently satisfactory MA program, the Department has acted in the manner of a political combat group rather than as an academic department, and not only in this particular incident.


1.  I have googled all the 17 current members of the Department to get an impression  of the extent of political activism of these professors.  None of these people were identified as active on behalf of Jewish, Zionist, or pro-Israel causes.  None were identified on the internet as political conservatives.  On the other side, at least two had been signers of anti-Israel statements in the past.  Another one is identified as a former member of the Maoist Communist Workers Party, now defunct.  A further one is identified as active on the Far Left.  If there is diversity of viewpoint in this Department, it is not apparent to the naked eye.

2. Some two years ago,  the Department hired as adjunct instructor a person who was still in the midst of graduate studies, but, apparently by way of compensating for the lack of a Ph.D., was known for his strongly anti-Israel views.  (For a description of this incident, see here.)  The vote of the Department, we are told, was unanimous.  With some seventeen voting members, and in view of the fact that this particular appointment was so contentious on campus and in the community,  it is remarkable to find such unanimity.

3. When the current matter of BDS sponsorship came up for Department decision,  there again was a vote, but we are not told whether there was dissent.  The press tried to ascertain how the vote went but no member of the Department has so far been willing to divulge the numbers.  In any case, no member of the Department has come out to speak publicly against the sponsorship.  Again, there is a baffling wall of unanimity on a matter of great public contention.

4. When the chair of the Department was pushed for a statement on the BDS affair, his language was both combative and ambiguous:

A student group at Brooklyn College has organized a panel discussion regarding the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a non-violent response to the State of Israel's handling of the Palestinian conflict. On college campuses around the country and across the world, this issue is being discussed. Brooklyn College should be no different. The department of political science has thus decided to co-sponsor this event. We encourage students and members of the community to attend, pose their questions, and air their views.  (See my collection of documents) 

Read by an apologist for the Department, the statement might be interpreted to mean that the Department merely wishes to present BDS views without endorsing them.  But to anyone else, the phrase "a non-violent response to the State of Israel's handling of the Palestinian conflict" clearly signals support to the BDS movement.

5. Corey Robin, an Associate Professor in the Department (whose anti-Israel traces can be found on the internet), sent an e-mail to students and staff in January:

From Professor Corey Robin: URGENT: Hi everyone. I need you all to stop what you’re doing and make a phone call or write an email to the administration of Brooklyn College. A few weeks ago, my department (political science) voted to co-sponsor a panel discussion, featuring Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti, on the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement against Israel. In the last week, we’ve gotten a lot of pressure and pushback from the media, students, alumni, and now Alan Dershowitz (who’s been trying to track down our chair to “talk” to him). So far, the administration has held firm, but the pressure is only building and they are starting to ask us whether we endorse these views or are merely seeking to air them (to which we responded: “Was the Brooklyn College administration endorsing the pro-torture and pro-Israel views of Alan Dershowitz when it decided to award him an honorary degree?”) Anyway, I need you guys now to send an email or make a phone call encouraging the administration to stand by the department and to stand for the principle that a university should be a place for the airing of views, ESPECIALLY views that are heterodox and that challenge the dominant assumptions of society. Please contact: President Karen Gould ....; Provost William Tramontano ....; and Director of Communications and Public Relations Jeremy Thompson ..... Please be polite and respectful, but please be firm on the principle. Right now, they’re only hearing from one side, so it’s imperative they hear from many others.

(See my collection of documents)

Robin's reference to Alan Dershowitz is particularly telling:   A) Robin indulges in defamation of Dershowitz ("pro-torture," etc.) that is currently common in the Far Left but is totally without foundation.  For example, Dershowitz has never spoken at Brooklyn College on any contentious issue, let alone on Israel or the Palestinians.  See Dershowitz's own refutation of these attacks against him here. B) When Robin speaks about alleged appearances of Dershowitz  on the BC campus as justification for the BDS rally, his argument is of course tu quoque and not actually worthy of an Associate Professor of any discipline whatever.

In any case: is this the letter of an educator or of an agitator ?

6.  The following is a list of the sponsoring organizations for the BDS events (See my collection of documents)

Adalah NY
Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
American Muslims for Palestine
The Political Science Department at Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College Student Union
Brooklyn For Peace
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual Association at 
Brooklyn College (LGBTA BC) - Upholding freedom of speech
Critical Palestine Studies Association at the CUNY GRAD Center
CUNY School of Law National Lawyers Guild Chapter
Existence is Resistance
Hunter SJP
International Socialist Organization
Jewish Voice for Peace
Jews say No!
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
John Jay SJP
Columbia SJP
Muslim American Society Chapter - MAS on Campus
New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership (NYACT)
The Occupy Wall St Social Justice Working Group
Students for Justice at NYU
Labor for Palestine
New York City Labor Against the War

Each of the groups other than the Poly Sci Department  is well known as overtly and unabashedly anti-Israel, some more so than others.  The Independent Socialist Organization, about which I have written elsewhere, is perhaps the most radical in this respect, demanding continuing intifada and the complete destruction of the Jewish state.

Why is an ostensibly neutral academic department in this list ?

Conclusion

If this were a church/state issue, the endorsement by a public, taxpayer entity of a sectarian cause would by clearly unconstitutional (Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963).  Mutatis mutandis, the sample principle should apply here.  New York's Jewish community and the elected officials of Brooklyn are right in demanding that Brooklyn College adopt more politically-neutral policies in the future.


UPDATE, February 15

Jonathan Marks, in an article "Department of Excuses," throws more light on the affair.  For instance, we now know that the Political Science Department attempted to secure the collaboration of other departments for its endorsement of BDS but was decisively rebuffed in all cases.

Very Creative Writing at the University of B. C.

When the Times Literary Supplement of January 11 carried an advertisement by the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia, my interest was aroused.  No, I am not in the market for a job as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing (two of these positions are offered), and no, none of my grandchildren are either.  But I did spend many years at UBC, and have had a number of friends teaching CrWr there, and in general I like to keep up with things UBC.

The part of the advertisement that sparked my interest, in particular, began with the assurance that

The University of British Columbia hires on the basis of merit and is committed to employment equity and diversity within its community.

What can I say ?  Bravo, bravo, bravo.  Employment equity, great.  No nepotism.  No discrimination.  That means, for example, that one of my Orthodox Jewish nephews could apply.  Or that a young Tory acquaintance would not have his politics held against him.  Right ?

Well, as they say in the television commercials:  all that is true, but wait.  There is more.  The paragraph from which I have quoted continues as follows:

We especially welcome applications from members of visible minority groups, women, Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, persons of minority sexual orientations and gender identities, and others with the skills and knowledge to engage productively with diverse communities. We encourage all qualified persons to apply; Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada will, however, be given priority. 

So it seems that while all persons are equal, some are more equal than others.  Everyone is encouraged to apply, but some more than others:  "women, Aboriginal persons ...."  are especially welcome.  And if you are not a Canadian, well, you can apply, but you will not "be given priority."

Moreover, the writing is so creative that no dictionary  in the world will help you detect its meaning.  What in the world are "persons of minority sexual orientations and gender identities" ?  Do they mean gay and, well, transgendered people ?  The Creative Writers here will not say.  I guess that's why the writing is called Creative.

Meine DDR

A brilliant, revealing history of the "DDR," the "German Democratic Republic."  All in German, takes about an hour and a half to watch.  Go for it (if you know German)

On the Delusion of Worldly Honor

Dr. Bernard L. Madoff

(honoris causa, Yeshiva University, 2011)

Honorary doctorates, award dinners, lists of "best colleges" and "best rabbis,"  even Nobel and Pulitzer prizes:  to what extent does all that glitter indicate real gold ?

Here are my answers:

IF IT GLITTERS IT IS GOLD

But see also

Titles and other ornamental self-descriptions

The Peacock Factor

Partners in Hate. Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers

Here is a link to my essay:

Partners in Hate.  Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers

And here are links to related writings:

 Noam Chomsky's writings on Israel and Jews   

 Chomsky's Links to the neo-Nazis: Some documents  

 Chomsky Update: 2001-02

 Israel Shahak's writings on the Jews  

 What Edward Said Knows  

 Mr. Ralph Schoenman and the Art of Footnoting

The Matrix of Professor Jeff Halper  

"Liar...Coward...Little Fascist" -- Letters from Professor Chomsky

How Smart is Noam Chomsky ?

Why am I providing these links ?

The Google search engine, for reasons that are not clear, yields only Chinese characters as a link to my Chomsky pamphlet.  

Ms. Alice Walker and the Jews

It appears that Ms. Alice Walker, holder of a Pulitzer and many other honors,  has a problem with, well, what shall we call it ?  Zionists, the Hebrew language, Jews as a group ?  Let's just say it's complicated.

But here are some things that we do know.

1)  It is "humanitarian views that permeate her work."  How do we know this ?  Why, she herself has  told us so. Yes indeed, her views are absolutely humanitarian, we can definitely take her word for that one.   What a friend we have in Alice !

2)  Ms. Walker is in the news lately because she has refused to allow a Hebrew translation of her book The Color Purple.  She has given her reasons to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel:  in brief, she does not want the people of Israel to read her work.  Someday perhaps, but "now is not the time."  Put otherwise, she does not want to be on speaking terms with the Jews. Not now, but perhaps some day.  Well, OK, fine, we can wait.

3) But, as it happens, Ms. Walker once had a Jewish husband, with whom she had a daughter, Rebecca, who is now forty-three.  Now Ms. Walker has not been on speaking terms with Rebecca for at least a decade.  Look, you can't be on speaking terms with just anybody, can you.  Here is Rebecca's account of her relations with her mother.

4) Ms. Walker's negative views of Israel, she says, are based on what she heard as a juror (which she calls a "jurist') on the Russell Tribunal on Palestine:

As you may know, last Fall in South Africa the Russell Tribunal on Palestine met and determined that Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.  The testimony we heard, both from Israelis and Palestinians (I was a jurist) was devastating.  I grew up under American apartheid and this was far worse.

Of course Ms. Walker has been an anti-Israel activist for many years before she was appointed to this so-called RToP. In fact, according to the NGO Monitor, all the jurors and all the judges on this "tribunal" were long identified as anti-Israel activists. What sort of justice can you expect from a court all of whose members have declared against you long before the trial ? This RTofP, like the other Russell tribunals, is notorious as a kangaroo court pure and simple.

I do know that Ms. Walker does not want me to read what she writes, that if she knew of me, she would no doubt consider herself as not on speaking terms with me. Nevertheless, I now make this attempt, through this blog, to send her a little something that she might wish to consider.  Since she is a "jurist," she will no doubt be interested the US Supreme Court's position on tribunals.  The following is an excerpt from an opinion by Mr. Justice Black (who was not Jewish, so, dear Ms. Walker, no danger of contamination here) speaking for the Court,  In Re. Murchison, et al. 349 US 133 (1955):

A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process. Fairness of course requires an absence of actual bias in the trial of cases. But our system of law has always endeavored to prevent even the probability of unfairness. To this end no man can be a judge in his own case and no man is permitted to try cases where he has an interest in the outcome. That interest cannot be defined with precision. Circumstances and relationships must be considered. This Court has said, however, that "every procedure which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge . . . not to hold the balance nice, clear and true between the State and the accused, denies the latter due process of law." Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510, 532. Such a stringent rule may sometimes bar trial by judges who have no actual bias and who would do their very best to weigh the scales of justice equally between contending parties. But to perform its high function in the best way "justice must satisfy the appearance of justice." Offutt v. United States, 348 U. S. 11, 14.

The Colossal Insensitivity of the New York Times

Dharun Ravi, the Rutgers University student who revealed to the world that his roommate was gay, has now been sentenced to thirty days of jail and was also subjected to world-wide publicity for his bad behavior. "I do not believe that he hated Tyler Clementi," said the sentencing judge, "but I do believe he acted out of colossal insensitivity."

Colossal insensitivity deserves punishment, everyone seems to agree.  But what happens when the New York Times -- is there a more prestigious paper in the whole world ? -- what happens when this paragon of journalistic virtue engages in a spot of colossal insensitivity of its own ?

On page A15 of last Saturday's paper, the Times published a story (nonsensically labelled a "crime scene" column) entitled "With Dementia, Stepping Outside for Fresh Air Can Mean Going Astray."  It is an account of three elderly men who, the story says, experienced episodes of getting lost in the subway or street due to their alleged "dementia."  Two of these men are identified both by name and photograph.  But in the case of the third, the paper quotes the wife anonymously:  "She asked that their [sic] names [sic] be withheld -- 'There's a stigma with these situations,' she said."

The first person is described as an 82-year-old sociology professor with a Jewish name, the second an 80-year old person with an Hispanic name but apparently without an occupational background  worth mentioning.  The third of these alleged wayward demented, the one whose name is not mentioned because of the stigma problem, is also said to be or to have been a professor.

And, oh yes, the 82-year-old sociologist is said to be the husband of a woman sixteen years his junior.  It is on the authority of this woman, as we shall see, that the NYT felt justified in outing the sociologist as "demented."

Well, I must say that I identified with these old men, especially the sociologist.  At first I thought that I recognized his name, but this turned out to be in error.  (Was I demented here ?).  In any case, I felt moved to somehow get involved.  After consulting with a journalist friend on the matter of journalistic ethics, I wrote to the Times.  Here is the ensuing correspondence:

1)  My message to the "public editor" of the paper, whose job, I understand, is that of an independent ombudsman to handle complaints from the public:

Sir:   

The paper today carries a story on dementia:It starts with "... an 83-year-old retired sociology professor ...." As it happens, I am an 86-year-old retired sociology professor, and I must say that if I were lost in the subway I would not want to be labelled as suffering from dementia in the pages of the NYT. 

Here are some questions that arise: 

1) who made the diagnosis of dementia ?
2) who gave informed consent for the diagnosis to appear in the paper ?
3)  whose business is the diagnosis of an individual who in no way can be called a public figure ?

2) To which the PE replied as follows:

Professor Cohn, I suggest contacting Mr. Wilson directly...
I hope this helps.
Best,
Joseph Burgess
Joseph Burgess | Office of the Public Editor | NYT
Note:  The public editor's opinions are his own and do not represent those
of The New York Times.

3) And here is the reply I received from Mr. Michael Wilson, author of the column:

Professor Cohn,
Thanks for your note and your thoughtful questions. Mr. .... was diagnosed by his doctor, I believe; his wife allowed me to interview her and told me everything that you read about him, with her consent that it appear in the paper. True, he is not a public figure, but the story was about people who suffer from this condition in this city, and what the police do when someone disappears. To the extent that such an article might help someone in the future, Mr. ...'s wife must have believed her husband would not mind her sharing with me. I hope I've answered your concerns, and I thank you again.
Best,
Michael Wilson 

4)  To which I replied, with perhaps somewhat less courtesy than I should have mustered:

I do not believe that the wife here has the moral right to consent to a violation of Professor X's privacy.  Who gave her this right ?  Did a judge declare her husband incompetent ?  Did she act in his best interests when she agreed to have his identity revealed, as would be required if authority had been granted to her to speak on his behalf ?  Have you considered the harm and embarrassment that your actions may cause Professor X ?  How is the potential good of your story -- helping others in the future -- enhanced by divulging his name to the world at large ?  If you had written "One victim of dementia --  whom I shall call professor X --"  how would that have interfered with any legitimate public interest in the matter ?
As I will argue on a blog that I am planning ("I Beg to Disagree"), your article has all the characteristics of malicious gossip: 1. you cannot be sure of the accuracy of the diagnosis, because ethical physicians may not disclose details to you, and, at any rate, "dementia" is a matter of degree, at best.  2. It is harmful to an elderly person -- who may  or may not have had some "senior moments" -- to be labelled as "demented" to his circle of friends and colleagues.  For example, this professor may still be active in formal and informal scholarly networks, and to be labelled "demented" may result in both financial and emotional harm.
And, oh yes, I sincerely hope that you will live long enough to have senior moments of your own, and I also hope that, when that time comes, some young reporter on the NYT, even if encouraged to do so by your wife at the time, will not write a juicy little piece on how that old Wilson guy, a retired journalist no less, lost his way in the subway due his deplorable dementia.

Looking over this correspondence now, I think that it is telling that Mr. Wilson has the courtesy of addressing me as "professor," presumably because I do not appear to be "demented."  But there is no such courtesy in talking about "Mr." X, the allegedly demented retired professor.

There is a sizable sociological literature on the process of stigmatizing individuals.  By absolutely sheer coincidence, one of the pioneers of this work was a sociologist who was a close namesake  of the sociologist mentioned in this NYT column. (I had at first confused the two.)   Journalists do write about sociologists, retired and otherwise, but they do not seem to read their work.

And also, just wondering:  all that sensitivity that we are to show to racial, religious, and sexual minorities   ... should any of this apply to the elderly ?  To some extent, perhaps ?

How to Achieve Fame and True Recognition

Do you feel that perhaps you have not accomplished as much in life as you might have ?  Or do you perhaps feel a little under-appreciated ?  Fear not, help is on the way.

Today's mail brings a proposition from a  religious organization that offers to list me in its forthcoming journal as a man of high accomplishment,  one deserving great honor and recognition.  Just how much of these, however, depends on how much I am willing to pay.  Here are the choices:

"Patron"              $6,000
"Benefactor"       $3,500
"Supporter"        $4,500
"Angle"               $2,000
"Champion"        $1,500
"Guardian"          $1,000
"Hero"                  $  500
"Shepherd"          $  300

Can there be anyone who values the important things in life who would resist such an offer ?  Hint:  "Hero" seems the best buy, giving a lot for very little.

Concerning the pomposity of calling yourself "doctor" and other such foolishness

Just a few months before I arrived at the University of British Columbia, Queen Elizabeth visited there and signed the guest book.  She was of course known as "Her Majesty" to one and all.  But what title did she use in the guest book ?  Perhaps "My Majesty," thus imitating the pomposity of certain "Doctors" of our day ?  No.  She signed the book simply "Elizabeth R."  True, the "R" alludes to her royal status, but, overall, I think that her signature can serve as a model of modesty for us all.

Elizabeth R. at UBC, 1959

Similarly, some ten years before this royal visit, I had occasion to write to Albert Einstein to comment on a political statement he had made.  A few days later I received a courteous reply that assured me that he and I agreed on the matter after all.  And he signed his note "A. Einstein."  He did not find it necessary to remind me of his doctorate, or of his Nobel prize.

Others are less modest.  A certain Freiherr zu Guttenberg, German defense minister until he was forced to resign in disgrace last year, felt constrained to call himself "Doctor" despite the fact that his dissertation turned out to be fraudulent.  And, similarly, there is the very sad case of Martin Luther King, Jr., who is still often referred to as "Dr. King," despite the fact that his dissertation, too, has been shown to be largely fraudulent.

Outright fraud aside, there is something unseemly in calling yourself "Doctor" in contexts that have nothing to do with the subject matter of your studies.

I have just written a longish piece that explores the folly of such pomposities.  You will find it here, on my website.

How smart is Noam Chomsky ? -- II

Chomsky says that Ron Paul is absolutely correct when he blames the US for 9/11.

How does Chomsky know this ? Because rich Muslims, when polled by the Wall Street Journal, have said so. For Noam Chomsky that is proof positive.

One problem remains:  Has Chomsky lost it altogether ?

And as I asked some time ago -- his claque of admirers notwithstanding -- just how smart, really, is Noam Chomsky ?






See also my earlier take on Chomsky's genius.



READ ALSO
Paul Bogdanor,  The Top 200 Chomsky Lies
 

Why There is No Peace Between Israel and the Arabs

Photo by Ahmed

As I write these lines, there are reports of peace talks in Amman between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, under the auspices of King Abdullah. Notwithstanding my very pessimistic view of such talks, which I will explain in this posting, I certainly hope that I will be proved wrong, that my pessimism is misplaced.  Time will tell.

As for now, I hold to a view that took firm form after the Palestinians' definitive rejection of the Camp David - Taba peace efforts of 2000 and 2001.  It then became obvious to me, as indeed it did to the Israeli public, that the Arab elites and the Arab "street" will not tolerate a Jewish state, no matter how small, anywhere in what the prevailing Arab view holds to be sacred Arab land, namely Israel.

In brief, I would accept what Professor Richard Landes has described as the Honor/Shame-Jihad paradigm:

The [Honor/Shame-Jihad paradigm] understands the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of honor-shame culture and Islamic jihad. These elements of Arab culture are the main factors that have made it impossible to reach a solution to the conflict. Arab leaders view any compromise with Israel as “losing face,” since such an agreement would mean recognizing as a “worthy foe” an inferior group that should be subject. Such a blow to Arab honor cannot be tolerated for cultural and political reasons: losing face means to feel utter humiliation, to lose public credibility, and to lose power. In search of lost honor, Arab (and Palestinian) elites, never particularly concerned with the welfare of their masses...

The Arabs' total rejection of any kind of Jewish presence in the Middle East is often hidden by a pervasive policy of forked tongue:  peaceful phrases in Western languages directed toward the West, violence of action and incitement to violence in Arabic-language pronouncements.

The atmosphere of Jew-Hatred

"The Jews, sons of apes and pigs, destroy Al-Aqsa"

Source: Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Oct. 9, 2009

Friday prayer and sermon, unidentified Hamas speaker:      "Today we look at Al-Aqsa as it sighs beneath the yoke of the Jews, beneath the yoke of the sons of apes and pigs, brothers of apes and pigs. Destroy the Jews and their helpers."Click here to view

In the territory of the Palestinian Authority, streets and other public places are regularly named in honor of suicide-terrorists who have died, thus honoring the deeds of Jew-killing as much as the terrorists who gave their all to banish the Jews from the Middle East.  The Palestinian Media Watch (an absolutely indispensable resource) has documented this ongoing PA practice.  Israeli spokespeople have rightfully pointed out, repeatedly, that the PA here incites to murder,  that it thereby contradicts its own verbal professions of non-violence.

Holocaust-denial, currently the most practiced of the anti-Semitic propaganda tropes worldwide, is pervasive in the PA territory as it is in the media of the Arab world.  The PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, has a PhD in Holocaust-denial, awarded by a Soviet university:

The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism (Arabic: al-Wajh al-Akhar: al-'Alaqat as-Sirriya bayna an-Naziya wa's-Sihyuniya. Publisher: Dar Ibn Rushd, Amman, Jordan. 1984) is the title of a book by Mahmoud Abbas,[1] published in Arabic.[1] It is based on his CandSc thesis,[2] completed in 1982 at Patrice Lumumba University (now the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia) under the title The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement (Russian: Связи между сионизмом и нацизмом. 1933–1945), and defended at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. 

In the book, Abbas argues that the Nazi Holocaust had been exaggerated and that Zionists created "the myth" of six million murdered Jews, which he called a "fantastic lie".[3][4][5] He further claimed that those Jews which were killed by the Nazis were actually the victims of a Zionist-Nazi plot aimed to fuel vengeance against Jews and to expand their mass extermination.[6] (Wikipedia)

One of the most symbolic actions of the Arab elites is the annual observance of "Nakba Day" (Day of the Catastrophe) to mark the establishment of Israel in 1948.  Contrary to verbal declarations that PA demands could be satisfied by a return to 1967 borders, the staging of the annual Nakba event consitutes a rejection of Israel even if it were confined to its most limited borders, i.e. those of 1948.  These Nakba observances send a powerful message to the Arab "street":  the existence of Israel itself is a crime, no matter how small Israel might be;  and our cause today is what it was in 1948, when the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded Israel, with material help from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Lybia.

 
The rejection of Israel by the Arab elites is so extreme that sometimes it appears comical.  One case in point is the ritualistic denial by Arab scholars, for propagandistic purposes, of any ancient Jewish connection to Jerusalem. In brief, according to these professors and, in the case of Jerusalem's Al-Quds University, of official University policy, there were no Jews in Jerusalem before modern times, there was no King David, there was no Jewish Temple.  I have documented these pseudo-scholarly distortions in a previous posting.

In the Muslim world, it appears that the word "normalization," when used in connection with Israel, is the equivalent of treason to the faith.  Despite the fact that both Jordan and Egypt, alone in the Arab world, have peace agreements with Israel, civic groups like unions and professional organizations in these countries routinely refuse any formal or informal relations with their Israeli counterparts.  Again, it is the PMW that has documented this phenomenon.

Violent Hatreds in the Muslim World

These Islamist manifestations of hatred against the Jews are very disturbing, but they must be seen against the larger, equally disturbing background of Islamist hatreds and violence that have nothing to do with Israel or the Jews, but which nevertheless have a bearing on the conflict between the Arabs and Israel.  The point here is that if the Arabs (and the Muslim world) behaves so violently in its internal conflicts, what hope is there for more pacific behavior when it comes to the Jews ?

First and most conspicuously, there is the conflict in Syria.  The Assads' regime, which from its very inception in 1970 declared itself as among the most implacable of foes of Israel, today kills thousands of its own people.  This development, unlike some of the others I am about to relate, has been well reported and needs no elaboration here.

The Iraq-Iran war of 1980 to 1988 was among the most savage in history.   Here is part of Wikipedia's description:

The war came at a great cost in lives and economic damage—half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers as well as civilians are believed to have died in the war with many more injured—but it brought neither reparations nor change in borders. The conflict is often compared to World War I,[17] in that the tactics used closely mirrored those of that conflict, including large scale trench warfare, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, use of barbed wire across trenches, human wave attacks across no-man's land, and extensive use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas by the Iraqi government against Iranian troops and civilians as well as Iraqi Kurds. At the time, the UN Security Council issued statements that "chemical weapons had been used in the war." However, in these UN statements it was never made clear that it was only Iraq that was using chemical weapons, so it has been said that "the international community remained silent as Iraq used weapons of mass destruction against Iranian as well as Iraqi Kurds" and it is believed[18][19][20] that the "United States prevented the UN from condemning Iraq".[18]

The bloody warfare by the Arabs of the Sudan against its fellow religionists in Darfur (as well as against the Black population of the South) is still ongoing.  It has received some Western attention, but the fact that most of the aggression emanates from Arab sources is not often mentioned. (There are now some new reports of warfare within the South, involving the Nuer and their neighbors, none of which are Muslim.)

And then there is the bloody repression of the people of Iran by its own government.

The violence in Somalia -- perhaps the most unfortunate country in the world -- seems mostly initiated by the Islamist Al-Shabaab, although it would take a specialist to sort out the various actors in that continuing disaster.

Of very great relevance here is the bloody story of intra-Palestinian violence.  Here is an account from Wikipedia:

Intra-Palestinian violence was a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of alleged Israeli collaborators. While Israeli forces killed an estimated 1,100 Palestinians and Palestinians killed 164 Israelis, Palestinians killed an estimated 1,000 other Palestinians as alleged collaborators, although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities.[4][5]And then there are the very frequent mutual killings by Fatah and Hamas.  

In short, over and above its violent Jew-hatred, the Muslim world harbors a virulent culture of internal violence.  One would think that this topic should be of interest to would-be peacemakers like Peace Now and JStreet, but -- guess what -- these and allied groups are generally mum on the subject.

Which brings us to


The Evolution of bien-pensant thinking on Israel


The  intransigence of the Arab elites would matter less if it were not for the support it receives, at least implicitly, from an apparently growing anti-Israel current in the liberal/left circles of the West.

Today we are used to seeing more than a few committed enemies of Israel in academia and in the high-brow punditry, whom Schleiermacher might have called the cultured despisers of Israel and Jews.  That was not always the case.  For the first twenty years or so of its existence Israel generally enjoyed, if not approbation, at least a modicum of good will among such classes.

A detailed, probing history of the evolution of such bien-pensant views remains to be written (are you listening, Mr. or Ms. Recent Graduate ?).  Suffice it to say, while objectivity (at least) could be counted on in the past, this is no longer the case.  Of course it is easy to exaggerate the importance of figures like Tony Judt, Mearsheimer, Walt, etc.:  when I attend AIPAC conferences, I find the most liberal members of Congress come out very strongly for Israel, no less so than the conservatives.  Nevertheless, it would seem that strongly hostile views and strongly hostile action are fairly common in liberal-left circles, especially so in the more activist groups like Occupy Wall Street (on this, see my piece here) and the politicized Lesbian groups.

While the overall picture of  changes in the bien-pensants'  viewpoint remains to be examined, the position of  one part of this public -- that of the Communists, their followers, and their lineal descendants -- is clear.  The Soviet Union broke diplomatic relations with Israel after the 1967 War,  on June 10, 1967,  and, for geo-political reasons, aligned itself with the Arab enemies of Israel, especially with Syria.  I happened to have been in Paris at the time, and I well remember the shock of French Jewish protesters at a demonstration against the sudden change of the line of the French Communist Party (PCF).  "We will not forget this," I remember one speaker declaiming, addressing the Party hacks.  Annie Kriegel has provided us with the text of a surprisingly anti-Semitic speech delivered by Benoît Franchon, Secretary of the Communist-controlled CGT union, one of the top PCF leaders,  at the Thirty Seventh National Congress of the CGT, held in Nanterre from June 12 to 16 of 1967:

They [war correspondents] have shown us -- replete with the details that go with a great demonstration of faith -- a ceremony at the Wailing Wall.... The presence of certain high financiers conferred upon it a significance that had nothing to do with the religious fervor which the true believers who participated thought to find in it.  The spectacle makes us think that, as in Faust, it was Satan who led the dance.  Nor was the golden calf missing;  there it was, just as in the Gounod opera, standing up contemplating its feet, amid the blood and the filth, the results of these diabolical machinations.  And indeed, we are told the two representatives of a cosmopolitan tribe of bankers attended this saturnalia, people well known throughout the world:  Alain and Edmond de Rothschild.  At their feet lay the dead, still bleeding.  Among them were Jewish workers, who died for them;  Jordanian workers and peasant, who also died for them.  (from l'Humanité, June 17, 1967;  reproduced in Kriegel, The French Communists, p. 163-4).

I believe that, with all the marginalized anti-Semitism that could be found in the Stalinist movement for years before, the decisive turning point came at this point, in 1967.  The upshot of course is well known:   how the "German Democratic Republic" became a bastion of "anti-Zionism;" how the Lumumba University in Moscow turned out doctors of Holocaust-denial (see the case of Abbas, above), etc. etc.

The Soviets' 1967 line, to which they held to the end of their existence in 1989, had a tremendous effect on the broad spectrum of liberal/left opinion.  The Soviets' fiercest opponents on the Left, the Trotskyists, followed their Stalinist enemy/friends in the decisive turn against Israel after the '67 War.   The Trotskyists  saw themselves in competition with the Communists for the pool of left-leaning "militants." As a result of the Soviet position, it became more and more required for the "revolutionary socialists" and the "anti-imperialists" to include a fierce opposition to "Zionism" in their propaganda. The Trotskyists could not afford to be outbid in the left-wing marketplace. (Of course there were earlier reasons, primarily the inherent Marxist anti-Semitism, that made them vulnerable for this shift.  I have discussed these matters here.)

As for the descendants of the old Stalinist movement, most strikingly The Nation magazine of the United States, it is the Soviets' turn against Israel in 1967 that still seems to weigh heavily in its hysterical campaign against Israel. (See my blog on this here). Obviously there are other reasons as well for the liberal/left "anti-Zionism" of our day.  Just what these are awaits the careful study of a historian yet to appear.

Conclusion

There is little hope for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors in the foreseeable future.  The reasons for this pessimism lie mainly in the Muslim culture of hate and violence.  The "anti-Zionism" of parts of liberal/left opinion in the West  -- giving support to the Islamist anti-Israel project --  contributes to the difficulty of finding a solution.

How clean are the countries that do not recognize Israel ?

There is a fairly reliable index of corruption in the various countries of the world, the Corruption Perception Index, according to which the "cleanest country" (New Zealand) is rated 9.5, and the lowest (Somalia) is rated 1.0.  The average country receives a score of 5 or 6.

Now, of the 192 members of the UN, Israel has diplomatic relations with 156.  The remaining 36 governments refuse to have such relations with Israel, some more vociferously than others.  Quite a few go so far as to deny that Israel exists at all.  The full story is told here.

As it happens, the countries that refuse to have diplomatic relations with Israel are, by and large, among the most corrupt in the world, some having a cleanliness score of no more than 1 or 1.5 out of ten. The average rating for these refusal countries is 3.16.  (The US has a score of 7.1, Israel 5.8).  Below are the scores of all the 36 governments that refuse to deal with Israel:

Afghanistan	1.50
Algeria	2.90
Bahrain	5.10
Bangladesh	2.70
Bhutan	5.70
Bolivia	2.80
Brunei	5.20
Chad	2.00
Comoros	2.40
Cuba	4.20
Djibouti	3.00
Guinea	2.20
Indonesia	3.00
Iran	2.70
Iraq	1.80
Kuwait	4.60
Lebanon	2.50
Libya	2.00
Malaysia	4.30
Mali	2.80
Mauritania	2.40
Morocco	3.40
Nicaragua	2.50
Niger	2.50
North Korea	1.00
Oman	4.80
Pakistan	2.50
Qatar	7.20
Saudi Arabia	4.40
Somalia;	1.00
Sudan	1.60
Syria	2.60
Tunisia	3.80
United Arab Emirates	6.80
Venezuela	1.90
Yemen	2.10
average	3.16

"Guilt by Association"

I. F. Stone (Isidore Feinstein), 1907-1989

very progressive journalist, and pioneering user of 

the trope "guilt by association"

All my adult life as a newspaperman I have been fighting, in defense of the Left and of a sane politics, against conspiracy theories of history, character assassination, guilt by association and demonology.  I.F.Stone

A "new McCarthyism" is seen in the manner in which guilt by association has been pursued by the likes of Glenn Beck and "mainstream" GOP leadership (if there is such a thing).  Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation

In the United States of America, we don’t practice guilt by association. And let’s remember that just as violence and extremism are not unique to any one faith, the responsibility to oppose ignorance and violence rests with us all.  Jeremy Ben Ami, President, JStreet

 The tenuous "evidence"—later discredited—that landed Arar in a rat-infested cell was guilt by association. And if that could happen to Arar, a successful software engineer and family man, who is safe?  Naomi Klein

This is the story of a late-twentieth century invention, namely the ostensible moral and intellectual sin of accusations of "guilt by association."

This trope, "guilt by association," or GbA,  has a curious history and a curious present.  It has the following characteristics:

1) The trope user is almost invariably a self-described person of the "Left," or, in somewhat more modern usage, a "progressive."  The target is someone perceived as, or at least designated as someone opposed to the Left, a "right-winger."

2) The trope has a surface resemblance to accusations of established errors of reasoning -- fallacies -- but in fact it is the user of the trope who is illogical and irrational.

3)  The accusation underlying the usage of the trope is as much moral as intellectual;  the trope user combines a disdain for the ethics and morality of the target (the ostensible bad faith of so-called right-wing McCarthites, for example) with an accusation of intellectual incompetence (failure to understand elementary logic).

4)  The trope enables its users, who are often devoted supporters of totalitarian and other hateful movements, to pose as moral and intellectual superiors.

Morris Raphael Cohen (1880-1947)

Except when an author is involved in left-wing political polemics himself ( e.g. Fearnside and Holther in "Fallacy," 1959),  books on formal logic do not discuss this trope;  despite the claims by its proponents, it is not one of the recognized "fallacies."  But there is, or can be, some kernel of truth in the otherwise mindless GbA trope, namely that generalizations can be inappropriate.  Here is what that eminent American logician and long-term CCNY professor Morris Raphael Cohen (with Ernest Nagel) had to say in their Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (1934):

We have so far discussed the relation between premises and conclusion in case of rigorous proof.  But complete or conclusive evidence is not always available, and we generally have to rely on partial or incomplete evidence.  Suppose the issue is whether a certain individual, Baron X, was a militarist, and the fact that most aristocrats have been militarists is offered as evidence.  As a rigorous proof this is obviously inadequate.  It is clearly possible for the proposition Baron X was a militarist to be false even though the proposition offered as evidence is true.  But it would also be absurd to assert that the fact that most aristocrats are militarists is altogether irrelevant as evidence for Baron X having been one.  Obviously one who continues to make inferences of this type (Most Xs are Y's, Z is an X, therefore Z is a Y) will in the long run be more often right than wrong.  An inference of this type, which from true premises gives us conclusions which are true in most cases, is call probable. 

Those who employ the GbA trope misconstrue statements of probability to make them appear to be statements of certainty.  For example, the Wikipedia article on GbA employs a Euler diagram to argue the obvious:  if some B is part of C, it does not follow that all of B is C.  But in the political discussions to which the GbA users address themselves, the arguments by the GbA targets are not arguments of certainty.   It is not (typically) claimed that all members of a Communist front organization were dedicated Stalinists.  Insofar as such arguments were at all serious, they were arguments of probability, not certainty.

The "guilt" in the GbA trope is also telling.  "Guilt" is a term most frequently used in the criminal law, where the standard of proof is much higher  -- "beyond a reasonable doubt" --  than in the everyday world of political discussion.  The judgements we make in ordinary scholarship and in ordinary life  rely on what seems more probable, not on what seems probably beyond a reasonable doubt.   During the lifetime of the late Paul Robeson, for instance, both he and the Communist Party always insisted that he was not a Communist at all, just a very progressive person.  (After he died, the CP revealed that he had been a secret Communist all along).  But in his lifetime, given all the various associations of Robeson, it was reasonable to hold, by a balance of probabilities, that Robeson was a Communist, even absent proof beyond reasonable doubt.

Moreover, the trope "guilt by association" is ambiguous in its very nature.  It is regularly applied to the following types of statement, among others:

1)  A was once seen in a certain bar in which the notorious gangster B was also seen.  Therefore A is a gangster.

2) A is a member of five groups that were dominated by the Communist Party.  Therefore there is a certain probability -- whether high or low needs to be established by all the other circumstances -- that A is also a Communist.

It is the gravamen of GbA proponents that the truth-value of propositions 1) and 2) is exactly the same, namely nil.  That is of course preposterous on its face.  Pace these progressive writers and activists, associations among men are varied.  Sometimes negative inferences can be drawn from them to a greater or lesser degree of probability.  In some instances, as for example in those designated by the law of conspiracy, association may indeed give rise to valid findings of criminality.  In other cases association may be totally harmless.  Most generally, human associations are relevant without being conclusive in a great many of the judgements that we are called upon to make.    The proponents of the GbA trope must know this as well as we all do;  in the course of their daily lives they must know, just as the rest of us do, how to chose their spouses, their friends, their business associates,  their merchants, all on the basis of some sort of "guilt by association" judgements.  But when it comes to politics, these progressive GbA proponents declare that all evidence of human association is ultra vires, inadmissible for discussion in the market place of political ideas.

The origins of the GbA are not altogether clear.  The usage seems to have arisen in the post-WWII era, most specifically in the nineteen fifties.  The country was faced, on the one hand, with a Stalinist conspiracy, both through an elaborate network of Communist front organizations and Soviet espionage.  On the other hand, there were demagogic politicians, notably Senator Joseph McCarthy, who sought to use the Soviet conspiracy for his own purposes by making exaggerated claims of Communist penetration of the US government.  But there were indeed many Communists in places of influence, for example in the trade unions, who by and large attempted to rid themselves of Communist domination.  The trope "guilt by association" seems to have arisen in this atmosphere as a defense mechanism by Communists and their fellow travelers.  I. F. Stone, quoted above, was one of the most prominent users of the trope.  The logic was always this:  true, some members of the front organizations are Communists, some may even be Communist spies.  But this has no relevance, no relevance whatever, to the nature of the "progressive" (read front-organization) movement.  Not a few of these progressives had been students at CCNY during the tenure of Morris Raphael Cohen;  their ears had obviously been deaf to his teaching.

Today, the trope seems to be used in two specific efforts by the progressives.  The first is to criticize (and to misconstrue) the public's concern over Islamist terrorism.  This concern is termed "Islamophobia," a fairly new addition to the progressive polemical armamentarium.  The GbA argument runs as follows:  a) it is true that some Muslims are terrorists;  b) not all Muslims are terrorists; therefore, c), it is unjust, it is "guilt by association,"  to be more concerned over activities of American Muslims than over those of American Christians and Jews.  The fallacy of the trope, of course, is to construe the heightened concern by the public as holding that "all Muslims are terrorists."  This latter proposition is not advanced by anyone in public life who is at all serious.  Were it to be encountered, it would of course be both false and malicious.

The second GbA effort concerns the overlap of self-described "leftists" and "progressives" on the one hand with the organized anti-Israel movement on the other. As I have shown in a previous posting, the progressive group JStreet contains a sizable number of aggressive opponents of Israel.  Those of us who point to this association are regularly accused of using "guilt by association."  The logic, or rather the illogic of this accusation takes the same form as that of the other GbA accusations that we have seen.

I recently reported my finding that six of the nine identified top leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement were also active in the anti-Israel movement.  One reader, an ordained rabbi no less, wrote to complain that I was engaging in a "guilt-by-association" argument.  I wrote back, explaining, among other things, that I made no accusation of "guilt" but I also insisted that surely, to a thinking man, there would be something of interest in this finding.  "Nothing of interest at all," replied the rabbi,   "what you say is a red herring."  Red herring ?  Here is another left-wing trope from the fifties. My curiosity was aroused.  "Rabbi," I wrote back, "indulge  my curiosity:  do you personally support the boycott movement against Israel ? "  "I will not answer this question;  it has no relevance to our discussion,"  replied the good rabbi.  Well there you have it:  an I. F. Stone of our time, bearer, unlike his predecessor, of the nice Jewish name of his birth.

Above all, the Arabs don't want the Jews to have a state....

Finally, a leading Israeli politician tells it as it is.

The Arab street, and elites,  may or may not wish the Palestinians to have a state.  But their main preoccupation, now as much as at any time, is to get rid of Israel.  This, more or less, is the gist of a remarkable interview with left-of-center Knesset member Einat Wilf, published in the Jewish Week of September 16. To read the whole interview, click here.

And here is an excerpt:

... the last decade, with the failure of Camp David, the intifada, the disengagement, the repeated failures of the Palestinian leadership to take advantage of opportunities to have a state has made me very skeptical. I began to question whether the Palestinians want a state more than they want the Jews not to have a state. They may want a state, but it’s second or third priority after making sure the Jews don’t have their state … I’ve become increasingly convinced that the conflict is not about simple territorial claims that can be resolved by finding where exactly the border should go. At the core, the entire Palestinian identity is wrapped in the battle against Zionism. It emerged as a separate identity only through this battle, and for them justice was always more important than statehood. … Given the opportunity to have a state but not perfect justice they’ve always tried to pursue their version of justice and given up on having a state…

 Einat Wilf

I felt the self-flagellation that has become a mark of the left — we don’t have peace because Israel didn’t do enough, in Camp David Barak should have been nicer to Arafat, should have let him go first through the door — it was getting to the point of just being ridiculous...
I’m still in the left in the sense that if by some miracle tomorrow there were an agreement with the Palestinians and it came to a vote in Knesset and we had to get out of the West Bank, I’d vote for it. I don’t have an emotional problem or attachment or messianic views that would make that difficult for me … But I’ve become skeptical that this is what the conflict is about and that it is possible to reach an agreement …

RIP: Eugene Nida, 1914-2011

He was not literally my teacher.  I never met him, and I certainly never sat in a class that he taught.  But I have learned from colleagues who had learned from him.  Two of his great books are on my shelf and I still refer to them from time to time:  God's Word in Man's Language (1952), and Bible Translating (1961).  Despite the fact that I have never had a direct interest in Bible translating, these books had a lot to teach me and indeed all social scientists.  Nida, together with a few others, was a giant in the social science of linguistics.  (Those were the days when linguistics was still a social science and not the speculative game it became later). Now he died, aged 96.

Here is a rare video of Nida as an old man, still teaching:



and here, a bit of comic relief, is an attack on Nida's scholarly approach to translation by a fundamentalist who thinks that the Bible needs to be translated one word at a time:



Of course the Chomskyans, who do not believe that language should be studied empirically any more than this misguided religious fundamentalist, could no doubt make an equally ludicrous anti-Nida video.  Maybe they already have.

Not to be missed:  the fine obit in the NYT by Margalit Fox.

Snake Oil for Sale: The Charlatans of Jewish Public Opinion Research

Two well-known Jewish organizations with contrasting attitudes toward Israel have recently claimed to have plumbed American Jewish attitudes in this subject.   Each group has claimed that its own political stance is the one actually favored by the Jewish community as a whole.  But since neither of these groups -- JStreet on the one hand, the Committee for Accuracy in Media (CAMERA) on the other -- has used scientific methods of public opinion research,  neither's claim can be said to be supported.

I have recently written an article in which I summarized my objections to JStreet's methods, including its polling, so I will not repeat this material here.  My objections to CAMERA's polling materials will become clearer presently.

*****

Some thirty or forty years ago my colleague Tony and I were sipping a little something in the Faculty Club, and this is the amusing tale he told:

It seems that a couple of decades before this, a man who later became quite important as "an intellectual" -- let's call him X -- crossed the US-Canada border from Detroit to Windsor to spend a half hour  of "observation" in Ontario.  He carefully took note of the automobiles that passed him in the street of Windsor, noting the manufacturer of each.  Upon returning to Michigan, he penned a report to his nephew.   Canadians, X averred, favor the Ford automobile over any other make, by a margin of about ten to one.  That "observation," I believe, later became enshrined in the X's published oeuvre.

But snake oil sold as social-science wisdom is not always so charmingly harmless.  During the presidential election campaign of 1936, the Literary Digest polled ten million Americans (of whom about 2.5 million responded) and concluded that Ralph Landon, the Republican, would be an easy winner.  In November, as we all know, it was the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt who won, overwhelmingly, carrying 46 out of 48 states.

What went wrong ?  And what went wrong with the current polling of American Jews that I am so concerned about here ?

When properly done, the science of public opinion polling can accomplish remarkable feats of understanding.  By consulting about two thousand people -- an appropriate random sample of about this number -- it is possible to gain insight into the opinions and attitudes of millions.  The theory of  this sampling (i.e. probability theory) has been understood by mathematicians for hundreds of years, but it has been the social science of the twentieth century that has developed the techniques to accomplish adequate public opinion polling.  But recent times have also brought to the fore a host of charlatans in this area.  How can we tell the genuine from the specious ?  The genuine from the grey-area operator ?

The principles are clear enough.  On the one hand there is a "population" or "universe," too large or otherwise impractical to study directly, on the other hand there is the random sample which, to a known degree of accuracy, "represents" this population.  How can this sample be obtained ?  The most basic requirement is that each member of the population has an equal chance to be drawn for the sample.  So, in principle, we must have a complete listing of the members of the population, and then a mechanism, such as a lottery cylinder, to draw individuals by strict random methods.

In practice, the strict adherence to random principles is generally impossible, not least because a complete enumeration of the underlying population does not exist.  If American Jewry is postulated as the population, there is also the additional problem of definition:  who is a Jew, exactly;  is synagogue affiliation either a necessary or sufficient attribute ? Jewish parents ?  If so, how many ?  And so forth.  Also, as I have shown elsewhere, there are inherent problems of a sample of American Jews if it is based on a random sample of all Americans,  primarily because American Jews are not distributed randomly in the American population, so that such samples systematically under-sample areas of Jewish concentration.  All such problems have reasonable solutions, but these are scientifically complex, and also generally more expensive than certain "pollsters" will want to consider. The  National Jewish Population Survey, on the other hand,  furnishes an example of responsible scientific work.

For the use of public opinion polls in general, the New York Times has published its own very sensible standards.  What can the reader do when faced with reported "public opinion data" of unknown quality ?  Responsible, high quality social science in this area is not always easy to verify, since there are so many variables:  the selection of a scientific sample (obviously the first necessity), the formulation of the questions (sometimes inadequate, sometimes biased), the overall scientific quality of the various steps in the research process.  On the other hand, there is a telltale of absolutely unacceptable work:  failure of the researcher to disclose the details of his work.  When, as is the case of both JStreet and CAMERA here, the researcher fails to specify how his sample was obtained, the research, if for no other reason, is unacceptable.

As it happens, I have in the past corresponded with the executives of CAMERA, and so felt free, especially in view of my overall support of the work of that group, to express my suggestions in regard to their use of polling data.  I wrote to two of these people, for a total of three times, without ever once receiving a reply.  Here is the text of one of my messages:

Dear   , 

It would appear that the Luntz poll, which CAMERA sent around in its latest Alert, is not a scientific poll.  If I am right on this, it should be labelled non-scientific, to be accepted, if at all,  with caution. 

I am particularly interested in this problem because I recently had to criticize the polling practices of JStreet....It would appear that my methodological points here apply to Luntz as much as to  Gerstein (JS's pollster). The problem is the following:  it is very difficult (read expensive) to have a valid sample of the American Jewish population.  As I point out in my blog, the National Jewish Population Survey does a very good scientific job of surveying the Jewish population, but, as far as I can tell, nobody else does.  I wrote to JS's Gerstein to voice these concerns, but never received an answer. 

Yesterday I wrote to Luntz, as follows: 

Would it be possible to get details on how your sample was selected ?
My interest in the matter is detailed here:
http://www.fringegroups.com/2011/05/jstreet-gentle-facade-and-whats-behind.html
thanks for your help
Werner Cohn 

to which I received the following reply: 

Thank you for contacting us.  We appreciate your thoughts, suggestions and time it took you to write us. 

You MUST register ON OUR WEBSITE to be eligible for one of our focus groups or nationwide surveys.   You can sign-up on our website at http://www.theworddoctors.com/  Sorry, but requesting to sign you up by emailing us will not work. 

Due to the high volume of emails we receive, we cannot guarantee a response to your email. 

Remember: it's not what you say, it's what people hear. 

Sincerely, 

Dr. Frank Luntz & The Word Doctors Team
*Become a fan on Facebook* http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Frank-Luntz/249263279310

The report of the Luntz survey, to which CAMERA links, contains no information on how the sample was selected.  When this information is missing, no knowledgeable  reader can accept the results as scientific.  I think that you should press Luntz to explain his methodology publicly.  If he does not provide this information, and/or if, as I suspect, his methods prove to be less than scientific, there needs to be a disclaimer on your website, IMHO. 

No doubt you will appreciate the position of CAMERA supporters like myself when we criticize JStreet's various obfuscations.  If, as I hope it will, CAMERA comes out for truth in polling, our criticisms of JStreet  can gain significant additional force.

IN MEMORIAM:  John Gray Peatman (1904-1997), my first statistics professor at CCNY, ca. 1949


UPDATE, MARCH 2013

The organization Workmen's Circle has an old and proud history in the American Jewish community.  Formed by Eastern European immigrants in the early 20th century,  it had connections with the anti-Stalinist Jewish socialist movement.  It gained many members through its "fraternal benefits," i.e. funeral arrangements.  I myself belonged to it for a short while.

But lately, partly through its emphasis on its Yiddish-speaking heritage, it has largely fallen prey to a new type of membership:  militantly secularist, allied to anti-Israel causes.  Its old-time membership, people in their eighties, seem bewildered and outgunned.

Now this latter-day WC published what it calls a poll of American Jewish opinion, arriving at conclusions that purport to show that American Jews actually care little about Israel.  And how did the pollsters of the WC learn all this ?  Here is their description of their sampling method:

The poll was commissioned by the Workmen’s Circle / Arbeter Ring. For more information on the organization, go to:www.circle.org.
Principal investigators were Professor Steven M. Cohen of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) and Professor Samuel J. Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College and Stanford University.
The Washington office of IPSOS, under the direction of Dr. Alan Roschwalb, fielded the survey. Respondents included 1,000 American Jews, by Internet, who had previously agreed to participate in social research conducted by IPSOS. Survey was conducted April 19 – May 3, 2012.
The results were weighted to reflect the American Jewish population with respect to age, gender, regional distribution, educational attainment, marital status, intermarriage status, and Jewish parentage (none, one, two parents). They were also weighted to reflect registered voters

The participants in this "poll" were, it would seem, self-selected.  All were internet users, which of course automatically eliminates Haredi Jews.  The procedure seems, as if by design, to evade all scientific understanding of sampling.

Or did I perhaps miss something ?  Can something be said by way of reasonable scholarly explanation of this poll ?  I sent polite separate e-mails to Professor Cohen and Abrams, as well as to IPSOS and even the WC itself, asking for more details on the sampling method used in the poll.   Not one of these bothered to answer my  questions.