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JEWISH AFFAIRS ROSH HASHANAH 2012spends hours ‘watching a valley / move throughcolours and into the dark.’ The naturalism in laterpoems is poised between classical evocation anda mordant, modern wit.Elsewhere in the collection, Wallensteinframes his verse within the Brownean dramaticmonologue, subverts fairy tales and simple rhyme,and re-makes myth. Memorable poems includethe wonderfully wild ‘Roller Coaster Kid’, and‘A Turn of Events’, which feels like Robert Frostby way of Sam Peckinpah.Wallenstein writes deftly about ‘the gatheringgrace of – / going on.’ He excels at interrogatingthe intersection between the earthly and theoutward-bound. Whereas many poets becomeweary with age, Wallenstein appears to feel bothfreed up and fired up, experimenting with formand unafraid to explore life’s pleasures and perils.Drastic Dislocations demonstrates theconsistently high standard of his work these pastthirty-five years.Whether one is a long-time admirer or engagingwith Wallenstein’s verse for the first time, this isa vibrant and valuable volume.Drastic Dislocations by Barry Wallenstein, NYQBooks, New York, 2012.THE ARAB LOBBY*Gary SelikowThe pervasive myth of an all-powerful Israellobby controlling American foreign policy haslong dominated public discourse. In The ArabLobby: The Invisible Alliance that UnderminesAmerica’s Interests in the Middle East, MitchellBard shows how Arab governments use theirpetrodollars and control of energy supplies tocontrol American foreign policy in favour of theAnti-Israel, pro-Arab cause. In the same way,they dominate educational institutions and themedia, thereby fostering heavily one-sided pro-Palestinian public opinion.Bard demonstrates how the discourse on theArab-Israeli conflict is distorted due to theimmense financial resources of the Arab lobby.His book highlights the latter’s manipulation ofAmerican foreign policy and public opinion,usually out of public view, and in ways that havegone unnoticed that need to be exposed. In Bard’sview, the Arab lobby exerts a malignant influenceon American foreign policy, with the result thatbasic American values and American securityneeds are disregarded in order to bolster repressiveArab regimes and terrorist organizations.The Arab Lobby has had much success. ThePalestinians receive more capita aid than anyother group in the world, indeed more than all ofSub-Saharan Africa put together. As Bard writes:“Even as hundreds of thousands of people die inDarfur, it is the Palestinians who get the world’ssympathy and donations of billions of dollars”.The Arab Lobby has adopted the terminologyof the Jewish people and turned it against Israel.For example, Palestinians, like Jews, now live inGary Selikow is a researcher and media activist.His reviews of books of Jewish and Middle Eastinterest appear regularly online and elsewhere.the ‘Diaspora’. Israelis are compared to Nazisand their actions are characterized as ‘pogroms’,‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’. Israelis accusedof creating ‘ghettos’ and even engaging in a‘holocaust’. The disputed territories are nowtermed ‘occupied’. The pro-Islamic lobby hascreated a new term to brand all who are concernedabout radical Islam, Islamization and Islamicterror, namely ‘Islamophobia’.The most successful of the lobby’s campaignhas been its infiltration of the educational system,including a sustained and sinister campaign toalso influence students outside the classroom.The Muslim Students Association haspropapagated the falsehood that “Zionism isracism”, and disseminated the Protocols of theElders of Zion, while the Palestine SolidarityMovement has supported Arab terror againstIsraeli civilians and vigorously supported the socalledRight of Return, something aimed atdemographically swamping Israel’s Jewishpopulation.When pro-Israel students asked the PSM attheir conference at Duke University in 2004 tosign a benign statement calling for civil debatethat would condemn the murder of innocentcivilians, support a two state solution and“recognize the difference between disagreementand hate speech”, they were refused. By hostinga group that could not bring itself to object to themurder of children, Duke therefore lent supportto terror sympathizers, as did other universitiessuch as Berkely Wisconsin, Ohio State andGeorgetown. In one shocking incident, an Israelistudent asked Professor John Massad a questionat a public lecture and Massad responded bythundering, “How many Palestinians did you kill?”Massad had also written that Israel is a “racist48
JEWISH AFFAIRS ROSH HASHANAH 2012colonialist” state and that Zionists are Nazis. Heargues for a ‘one-state solution’ to the conflict(that is, the abolition of Israel and its replacementby an Arab ruled Palestinian State). At AmericanUniversity, an anthropology professor used acomic book in the vein of Der Sturmer as a text.Another professor crossed out the word ‘Israel’on a student’s exam and wrote in the margin“Zionist entity”. An especially perverse statementwas made at an anti-Israel rally at ColumbiaUniversity on 17 April, 2002, Israel’sIndependence Day, by Professor of Latino StudiesNicholas de Genova: “The Heritage of the victimsof the Holocaust belongs to the Palestinian people.The State of Israel has no claim to the heritage ofthe Holocaust”. Thus, according to De Genova’sgrotesque thinking, a country with thousands ofHolocaust survivors and hundreds of thousandsof descendants of Holocaust survivors has noclaim to the heritage of holocaust victims, but apeople that did not suffer from the Holocaustdoes. So much for the great minds of academia!Syllabi in the humanities departments ofuniversity campuses contain powerful and hatefulpropaganda against Israel. One of the drivingforces behind this is the Middle East StudiesAssociation (MESA), to which the centralityaccorded the Palestine issue at the expense of allother peoples suffering in the Middle East is due.In a study of the three-year period following 9/11,Martin Kramer found that “For MESAns, thePalestinians are the chosen people now more thanever. Arab financial pressure has influenceduniversities in more ways than one. Texas A&MUniversity effectively pressured the PBS stationto cancel a screening of the movie about abuse ofwomen in Saudi Arabia called ‘Death of aPrincess’”.The study of Israel and the Hebrew languagehas been marginalized, delegitimized and evendemonized at universities across the USA.Furthermore, there is vociferous support forHamas and Hezbollah at such institutions. AnIsraeli Arab who is the Palestinian Affairscorrespondent for the Jerusalem Post returnedfrom a 2009 speaking tour of American collegecampuses and reported, “There is more sympathyfor Hamas then there is in Ramallah. Listening tosome students and professors at these campuses,for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite aHamas spokesman or would-be suicide bomber ...the so called pro-Palestinian ‘junta’ on thecampuses has nothing to offer other than hatredand delegitimization of Israel. If these folks reallycared about the Palestinians, they would becampaigning for good government and for thevalues of democracy and freedom in the WestBank and Gaza Strip”.There is also an insidious campaign to bar allIsrael academics from American universities. AsAlan Dershowitz points out, “many of the peoplewho want boycotts claim that Israel is inflictingcollective punishment on the Palestinians, but aboycott is effectively punishing every Israelacademic without regard to what their views maybe.”All this and more is exposed in Bard’s book,which provides a much-needed analysis of howdeeply the US’s Arab lobby is impacting on publicpolicy and intellectual trends regarding Israel,the Middle East and the phenomenon of radicalIslam.The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance thatUndermines America’s Interests in the Middle East byMitchell Bard, Harper, 2010, 432ppTHE PRIME MINISTERS: AN INTIMATENARRATIVE OF ISRAELI LEADERSHIP*Ralph ZulmanAmbassador Yehuda Avner was born inManchester, England in 1928. He was a foundingmember of Kibbutz Lavi in the Galilee, and enteredthe Israel Foreign Service in the 1950s. Duringhis lengthy diplomatic career, he served as Consulin New York, Counsellor at the Israeli Embassyin Washington D.C., Ambassador to Great Britain,Non-Resident Ambassador to Ireland, andMr Justice Ralph Zulman is a long-servingmember of the editorial board of and regularcontributor to Jewish Affairs.Ambassador in Australia. Between overseaspostings, he served as a speech writer and secretaryto Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol and Gold Meir,and as adviser to Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin,Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres. He is afrequent guest columnist for the Jerusalem Post.Given this background, Avner was well placedto write an insightful account into the Israelileaders whom he served. This he has done withhis 2010 book The Prime Ministers: An IntimateNarrative of Israeli Leadership. The bookcomprises an Author’s note, Acknowledgements,49
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