tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post2943755193767938169..comments2023-10-26T06:29:39.824-07:00Comments on The Magnes Zionist: Tough Jewess -- Wisse's "Jews and Power"Jerry Haberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15173892714754718716noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-53491105196141167422007-10-24T20:39:00.000-07:002007-10-24T20:39:00.000-07:00I assumed that Jews and Power is a sort of reply t...I assumed that <I>Jews and Power</I> is a sort of reply to (or preemptive strike against) <I>The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy</I>. The reader is supposed to map <I>Jews</I> to <I>The Israel Lobby</I> and <I>Power</I> to <I>US Foreign Policy</I>.<BR/><BR/>Wisse was not actually working from Walt and Mearsheimer's book. Only the paper on the Harvard website and the LROB abridgement were available, but the lack of the complete thesis was not really an issue because she has no interest in engaging any of the points that W&M raise.<BR/><BR/>The book seems more an attempt to immunize the Zionist consciousness of Jewish readers so that W&M's arguments will not be able to stir up any deviant thinking among American Jewish reflexive Zionists.Joachim Martillohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00121944171459090792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-73876781661163862502007-09-17T03:27:00.000-07:002007-09-17T03:27:00.000-07:00FWIW, I find discussions of Jewish powerlessness i...FWIW, I find discussions of Jewish powerlessness in galut rather pointless.<BR/><BR/>Rather like mirror-images of the anti-Semite take of Jewish hyperpowerfullness.<BR/><BR/>Perhaps if more Jews took the nature of the last two thousand years - minority status as a trading community - as a starting point, then compared it with similar trading communities world-wide, we might get some better analysis. (Similar trading minorities - eg, the Overseas Chinese in South-East Asia, the Indians in Britain, etc ... there's a lot of them, and a whole lot of stuff written about them. But precious little on a "general theory" of such communities. What a waste! ;)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-44381261475896673452007-09-07T11:48:00.000-07:002007-09-07T11:48:00.000-07:00Eurosabra, if you feel comfortable, you can contac...Eurosabra, if you feel comfortable, you can contact me off list. I didn't mean to take a swipe at supporting people-to-people relief initiatives, such as the ones you mention. On the contrary, since the conflict is intractable (terminal?), the best we sometimes do is to relieve the suffering of the patient. So yishar kokhekha for thatJerry Haberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15173892714754718716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-9031484749792792242007-09-07T11:43:00.000-07:002007-09-07T11:43:00.000-07:00Thanks for this comment. Who will tell us old foge...Thanks for this comment. Who will tell us old fogeys where things are headed to intellectually if not grad students? <BR/>I didn't mention Jacqueline Rose. I have read some of the reviews but not the book. I probably would agree with much of it, but not with the psychological theoretical overlay. Still, I should give it a chance.<BR/>My own neck of the words is more political/philosophical the justification of the morality of Zionism and the institutions and practices of the Jewish state. Here I can tell you that an important book will be published by Oxford next year called The Justice of Zionism. The author, Chaim Gans, a professor at Tel Aviv University, considers himself on the extreme-left, but he gives a liberal defence of political Zionism in this book that will make no mainstream Zionist happy, and he does it through extensive knowledge of other conflicts, human rights law, etc. He is a tad to my right, but definitely on the side of the angels.Jerry Haberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15173892714754718716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-41610364828849510682007-09-07T10:20:00.000-07:002007-09-07T10:20:00.000-07:00Hi, Jerry!Literary-psychoanalytical forays into qu...Hi, Jerry!<BR/><BR/>Literary-psychoanalytical forays into questions of Jewish power are currently all the rage, as Jacqueline Rose's _The Question of Zion_ attests. I am waiting for Wisse's book in the mail, and am already quite familiar with David Biale's _Power, Powerlessness, and Jewish Hstory_ and its more nuanced critique. In Israel, I was at the Rothberg School in 200-1, and participated in the Shalem Center's graduate seminar. I am currently a Comp Lit grad student at an Ivy. I think we could have a Statist Zionism without bromides, but I am not myself willing to force it on anyone from the Diaspora--which means that, functionally, my Zionism (pace your swipe at "knee-jerk Zionism") means donations to Meir Panim, Yad Sarah, MDA and the PRCS. Most of my contact here has been with anti-Zionists, Ta'ayushniks, and mainstream Jewish Studies. The fact is, there has been a turn towards interrogation of Jewish-Arab intersections in the US (Shohat, Khazzoom, Hochberg, Alkalay) as well as in Israel (Shenhav, Chetrit) that bears watching and I think this year's crop of books on literature and Jewish identity (by Gil Hochberg, by Risa Domb, even Aamir Mufti if you want a South Asian twist) are more indicative of where things are going in the sphere of Jewish studies by literature profs than Wisse's work.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-17106691997460956572007-09-06T20:01:00.000-07:002007-09-06T20:01:00.000-07:00The question of when the war started depends on yo...The question of when the war started depends on your perspective. You are referring to the declaration of war by the Arab states after the declaration of independence in May 1948.<BR/><BR/>But *before* the Arab states declared war, between quarter of a million and 350,000 Palestinians had already been made refugees. That is because a civil war between the communities had begun at the end of 1947. The Palestinians, aided by by Arab Leagues' ALA fought the Jews and were beaten badly -- all this before May 1948.<BR/><BR/>The declaration of war by the Arab states, and the invasion by the Arab armies was a war between the State of Israel and the Arab states, not between Jews and Palestinians. Both the Arabs and Israelis were held responsible for the war by the UN, and the UN security council called upon all parties to cease violence. There was no condemnation in either the Security Council or the General Assembly of one side vs. the other. The unilateral declaration of the State of Israel was arguably a just casus beli; Netanyahu warned Arafat about the consequences (invasion) of the Palestinian's declaring a state. <BR/><BR/>But as I have said before -- if the Palestinians had a right to a state before 1947 -- and the Partition plan admitted as much, then they didn't lose that right because they lost a war.Jerry Haberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15173892714754718716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-60961682172017206822007-09-06T17:37:00.000-07:002007-09-06T17:37:00.000-07:00it is the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Pa...it is the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, the destruction of their lives, and the thwarting of their political aspirations <BR/><BR/>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/palestines-selfinflicte_b_48751.html<BR/><BR/>They started the WAR!!!! 1% of israel's population was killed!!!!<BR/><BR/>And Israel is not the cause of antisemetism. Antisemites are the cause. Theres a genocide going on in darfur and people are more "concerned" about the palestinians whose leaders are shooting rockets into Sderot every day!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7675600882597316438.post-44060593302124472202007-09-06T00:35:00.000-07:002007-09-06T00:35:00.000-07:00Kol hakavod l'cha, Jerry. The woman deserves the ...Kol hakavod l'cha, Jerry. The woman deserves the skewer. I've found her tendentious politics deeply objectionable for decades when mixed in what is otherwise supposed to be scholarly work. I'm not saying a scholar should not be politically engaged. But they at least should be engaged w. ALL the relevant texts and not give short shrift to those that are inconvenient to their thesis.<BR/><BR/>I really think highly of David Biale as a person & scholar & knew him when I was a Jewish studies grad student.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04532790438563813543noreply@blogger.com