The Volokh Conspiracy - Alvin Rosenfeld Responds to his Critics:

Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, as readers may recall, is the author of the AJC study identifying and criticizing "Progressive" Jews who express hatred of Israel. The study caused a stir after being completely mischaracterized by the New York Times as a study from a "conservative" organization attacking "liberal" Jews [email correspondence with the author of the piece suggests that she likely believes that anyone to the right of Jimmy Carter is "conservative"]. Rosenfeld has written a piece in The New Republic responding to his critics. Regular readers of this blog will note that Rosenfeld and I have noticed the same dynamic:

The ubiquitous rubric "criticism of Israel," however, has also come to designate another kind of discourse--one that has almost become a politico-rhetorical genre unto itself, with its own identifiable vocabulary, narrative conventions, and predictable outcomes. At its ideational core is what the British scholar Bernard Harrison calls a "dialectical scam." It goes something like this: (1) Spot an Israeli action that can serve as the ground of "criticism of Israel" (e.g., Israel's military incursion into the area near Jenin in April 2002 in response to Palestinian terrorist massacres); (2) Then "dissent" in the strongest possible terms, for instance by likening the "razing of Jenin" to the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, while anticipating that "powerful" and "repressive" Jewish institutions will try to "silence" the critics by calling them anti-Semites; (3) When taken to task by more sober-minded critics who find that, contrary to your charge, there was no such thing as "the razing of Jenin" and that the IDF has nothing in common with the SS, cry "foul" and claim their censure perfectly illustrates the point that there really is a Jewish organizational conspiracy to silence "criticism of Israel" by branding the authors of such criticism "anti-Semites." For some, this dialectical scam works nicely and validates their sense of themselves as intellectual martyrs suffering for a higher ideological cause. Once one is on to it, however, the scam readily dissolves into what it actually is: political bias, compounded by a touch of hysteria, masquerading as victimization.

	[David Bernstein, March 6, 2007 at 9:52pm] Trackbacks Alvin Rosenfeld Responds to his Critics: Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, as readers may recall, is the author of the AJC study identifying and criticizing "Progressive" Jews who express hatred of Israel. The study caused a stir after being completely mischaracterized by the New York Times as a study from a "conservative" organization attacking "liberal" Jews [email correspondence with the author of the piece suggests that she likely believes that anyone to the right of Jimmy Carter is "conservative"]. Rosenfeld has written a piece in The New Republic responding to his critics. Regular readers of this blog will note that Rosenfeld and I have noticed the same dynamic: The ubiquitous rubric "criticism of Israel," however, has also come to designate another kind of discourse--one that has almost become a politico-rhetorical genre unto itself, with its own identifiable vocabulary, narrative conventions, and predictable outcomes. At its ideational core is what the British scholar Bernard Harrison calls a "dialectical scam." It goes something like this: (1) Spot an Israeli action that can serve as the ground of "criticism of Israel" (e.g., Israel's military incursion into the area near Jenin in April 2002 in response to Palestinian terrorist massacres); (2) Then "dissent" in the strongest possible terms, for instance by likening the "razing of Jenin" to the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, while anticipating that "powerful" and "repressive" Jewish institutions will try to "silence" the critics by calling them anti-Semites; (3) When taken to task by more sober-minded critics who find that, contrary to your charge, there was no such thing as "the razing of Jenin" and that the IDF has nothing in common with the SS, cry "foul" and claim their censure perfectly illustrates the point that there really is a Jewish organizational conspiracy to silence "criticism of Israel" by branding the authors of such criticism "anti-Semites." For some, this dialectical scam works nicely and validates their sense of themselves as intellectual martyrs suffering for a higher ideological cause. Once one is on to it, however, the scam readily dissolves into what it actually is: political bias, compounded by a touch of hysteria, masquerading as victimization.