Alterman has a new column in the Nation, attacking Cathy Young for criticizing his insipid defense of the British Muslim Affairs Council boycott of Holocaust memorial ceremonies. A Fisking follows (and here’s Young’s most recent take):
[UPDATE: Alterman is running a campaign to get the Boston Globe to fire Young as a columnist. She’s a great columnist, and a frequent source of ideas for VC posts. You can write in her defense to her editor, Nick King, at n_king@globe.com.]
Young’s attack on me shared some of these bizarre qualities. She seized on a brief blog item I wrote on Altercation.msnbc.com, in which I noted the insensitivity of demanding that Arabs attend Holocaust remembrance ceremonies that (of course) made no mention of what many Arabs believe to be the Holocaust’s connection to what they consider their own “catastrophe”–namely, the founding of the State of Israel.
It was the British Muslim Affairs Council that boycotted the Holocaust ceremony, not “Arabs.” I don’t have exact figures, but it seems pretty obvious that most British Muslims are from the Indian subcontinent [UPDATE: as noted here], not Arabs. And if the Arabs (and/or Muslims) think that the founding of the State of Israel is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, that’s grounds for condemnation, not understanding. Indeed, the reason given for the boycott was Israel’s “genocide” against the Palestinians was not also commemorated, which is a horrible and inaccurate calumny against Israel (which, if it actually wanted to commmit genocide against the Palestinians certainly has the capacity to do so, and instead kept even the water and electricity flowing to the West Bank and Gaza and the height of the suicide murders). Is it insensitive to point out a blood libel? Is it insensitive to ask that the victims of the Holocaust not be used to score political points against Israel? Is it insensitive to ask British Muslims to see Holocaust victims as human beings, and not representatives of the “Zionist enemy”?
Young distorted my argument to accuse me of anti-Semitism and self-hatred, using an ellipsis to make it appear as if I were describing the founding of the Jewish state as a “catastrophe” rather than attributing that view to Palestinians and their Arab supporters.
Alterman wrote in his original piece: “I’m a Jew, but I don’t expect Arabs to pay tribute to my people’s suffering while Jews, in the form of Israel and its supporters — and in this I include myself — are causing much of theirs.” “The Palestinians have also suffered because of the Holocaust. They lost their homeland as the world—in the form of the United Nations—reacted to European crimes by awarding half of Palestine to the Zionists. They call this the “Nakba” or the “Catastrophe.” To ask Arabs to participate in a ceremony that does not recognize their own suffering but implicitly endorses the view that caused their catastrophe is morally idiotic.”
Once again, Alterman confuses Arabs with Muslims. And the idea that “Israel and its supporters” are causing “much” of Arabs’ suffering in a despotic, corrupt, and poor region where Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was more or less par for the course, is absolutely absurd. Not to mention–and I’m sorry to have to consistently repeat this–that the suffering of the Palestinians is largely self-inflicted, in the sense that they first refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist for forty years, starting with the U.N. patition plan of 1948, and when they purported to change their collective minds, Arafat was ultimately unable to exchange the rifle for the olive branch (not to mention that the Arab states decided to use Palestinian refugees as a political tool, rather than resettling them). In any event, plenty of Jews, including me, recognize that the Palestinians have indeed suffered, self-inflicted or not. So why can’t a Muslim group, as a representative of a great religious tradition, recognize one of the great horrors of world history, which, after all, happened to people? And how exactly is commemarating Holocaust victims “implicitly endors[ing]” any “view” other than that the Holocaust happened and it was a terrible tragedy? Unless Alterman wants to defend the rampant Holocaust denial in the Arab/Muslim World.
She went even further, insisting that by acknowledging that Palestinians and their supporters perhaps had reason to be less than thrilled with the creation of Israel, I was actually–I kid you not–blaming “long-dead Holocaust victims” and arguing that “every Muslim is justified in viewing every Jew as the enemy.” (In fact, the item in question spoke of Arabs, not “Muslims.” Neither Young nor her editor, Nick King, appears to
understand the difference.)
We’ve already established that its Alterman, not Young, who doesn’t know the difference between Arabs and Muslims. And yes, Alterman did imply that every Muslim is justified as viewing every Jew as the enemy.
[to continue, click below]
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