The New Republic

"The new lands, too, made their own claims, and the dominant ideology was one of assimilation." http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2010/05/video-mohammad-cartoonist-lars-vilks-hea/index.shtml

- noga1

May 11, 2010 at 11:00pm

Incredible document. Of course people like MacEachern will consider the treatment of the screaming wild dogs, racist. Yes they are a pack of wild dogs who should be expelled from Sweden, but I doubt they will.

- jdyer

May 11, 2010 at 11:52pm

Here is a journailistically brilliant complement to the piece by Ajami: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/renouncing-islamism-to-the-brink-and-back-again-1821215.html

- basman

May 12, 2010 at 12:44am

"...This was not generally as it was when your people came to America. ..." Is Peretz channelling the Know Nothing Party, the nativists who feared the influx of Irish and German Catholic immigrants in the 1840's? Some of those Germans had tried Revolution in 1848... What about all those Russian Jews bringing ideas of socialism and anarchism in the 1880's? The Yellow Peril of the 1890's? The Cuban Marielitos of 1980? [I am being sarcastic here] When I read Ajami's essay yesterday, my take-away was totally different than "What Do Immigrants Owe America? Apparently Nothing!" Maybe he wants to change a few words of the following: Emma Lazarus: "The New Colossus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

- K2K

May 12, 2010 at 12:51am

Ajami's piece is a terrific analytical distillation of a great and growing problem. However, when he passes from diagnosis to prescription, Ajami lapses into a truly pathetic defeatism. These people have twisted hearts and sickened minds, but "no strategy of 'hearts and minds,' no great outreach, will bring this struggle to an end." If one precludes the utility of persuasion, we are left only with force. Which is to say, in Ajami's view - and Marty's, apparently - we must either kill every jihadi or die. Yet no Western moral system, not even the depraved torturer's mindset Marty would have us all adopt, permits the summary execution of entire classes of people; and even if we had the stomach for the work, we haven't the ability; therefore the "long twilight struggle" cannot be won. We've already lost; all that's left is to wax nostalgic as we watch the final curtain fall and the last lamp flicker off. Which does in a fashion explain Marty's utter lack of interest in offering, or inability to articulate, any actual policies to replace those he condemns. In his worldview, policy doesn't matter; the jihadis will triumph in any case. But back to the Ajami/Peretz nexus of defeatism: If a significant root of the threat against us is a particular knot of psychological problems, then in fact some form of "hearts and minds" campaign must play a role in turning back the threat. Probably a decisive role. I know Marty is not capable of actual scholarship, but Ajami is, and so it's disappointing to see him fail to investigate whether past instances exist in which state action has altered the dangerous psychoses of particular groups sufficiently to end violent threats emanating from those groups. The answer is "yes." And so the interesting question is "how," and while that question admits of numerous answers, many of them contradictory due to differing circumstances, "kill all the brutes" is not one of them.

- rhubarbs

May 12, 2010 at 7:38am

rhubarbs makes a telling point: enough of diagnosis, he says, what we need is prescription, and that will take creative thinking. What indeed would it take to help assimilate immigrant Islamic potential "jihadis"? How do we get our most creative educators, psychologists, politicians, social scientists to focus on this crucial issue? Good food for thought. I certainly don't have the answer, but I bet a serious multidisciplinary effort could begin to figure it out.

- JackR

May 12, 2010 at 8:53am

rhubs, Is it just maybe possible that Ajami has a deeper understanding of the problem and the likelihood of the "hearts and minds" strategy working? The fact that you find the implications of his conclusion repulsive and arguably not implementable doesn't ipso facto mean that (a) Ajami is wrong and that (b) the "hearts and minds" strategy must work because the alternative is not palatable. Your reasoning is reminiscent of the Oslo peace processors who decided (against all available evidence) that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simply a negotiable territorial conflict & that Arafat is a worthy peace partner (to this day Yossi Beilin refuses to consider the heretical possibility that he was snookered by Y.A. & the Pals). This sort of thinking is what the once hard-core peace processor Aaron David Miller is grudgingly admitting now is the "false religion of the peace process" of which he is no longer a believer (here). Not every problem is solvable, which I understand is a heresy to the liberal western mind-set. Hershel Ginsburg Jerusalem / Efrata

- ginzy

May 12, 2010 at 9:30am

"Unlike the aristocratic narodniki of 19th century Russia, their aims are not to relieve the economically distressed—murderous Islamic jihad is in that sense hardly a social movement at all—but to bring all human beings to the sublime truths of Allah." This sounds like it was written by someone who is unfamiliar with Dostoevsky's "The Devils". Or the thoughts and actions of the Bolsheviks when they took power in Russia. I will give Marty the benefit of the doubt and say that he is familiar with all this and simply chooses to gloss over it in his desire to contrast it with today's jihadis.

- wildboy

May 12, 2010 at 9:48am

K2K, Peretz is being willfully dense in his desire to prove a point. Of course plenty of earlier immigrants to America "burned with fire for the perilous fevers of the Old Country", even though the majority of their compatriots only wanted to come here to make a new life for themselves. Hundreds of 19th and early 20th century Irish immigrants participated in rebellions or subsersive activity against Great Britain in the attempt to claim Irish home rule or independence, and many of their descendants continued to do so in the struggle over Northern Ireland (including funding lots of IRA gun-running). Thousands of Polish-American immigrants joined the armies of the re-born Polish state in its effort to expand and defend its territories against its Russian, German, Czech and Ukrainian neighbors after World War I -- a plaque in my Pittsburgh neighborhood commemorates a visit by Ignacy Jan Paderewski in 1917 to a Polish Sokol club in which he called for the formation of an army to fight for the new Polish state. A plaque elsewhere in Pittsburgh commemorates the 1917 agreement of Czech and Slovak representatives, from the US and elsewhere, to form a newly independent state out of the Austro-Hungarian territories inhabited by Czechs and Slovaks. Thousands of Jewish immigrants returned to Russia in the aftermath of the February 1917 revolution to celebrate the new socialist state without a czar(including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman), while others hosted Leon Trotsky in Brooklyn before he returned to lead the November 1917 Bolshevik revolution (and hundreds if not thousands aided the Yishuv and the new Israeli state with money, arms and their own service in the 1940s and 1950s). Thousands of German-Americans joined the German-American Bund in the 1930s to show their solidarity with Nazi Germany, as did thousands of Italian-Americans with similar organizations that praised Fascist Italy (while thousands of other German- and Italian-Americans formed anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist societies, which sometimes engaged in violent confrontation with their ethic fellows who supported the Nazis and Fascists). Americans of Baltic and Ukrainian descent constantly petitioned the US government to support the independence of their homelands from Soviet rule, and some covertly funded anti-Soviet guerrilla activities in the Baltics and Ukraine in the 1940s and early 1950s. Cuban-Americans have agitated to direct US policy toward Cuba since Castro took power in 1958, and some have engaged in both military operations (Bay of Pigs), terrorist acts (airplane bombings in the 1970s) and humanitarian missions (like the pilots shot down in the 1990s). More recent American immigrants from Eritrea, Liberia and Somalia have backed parties to conflicts in their homelands in the 1990s and 2000s. And that's just off the top of my head. Heck, Marty Peretz himself is a perfect example of a child of immigrants who passionately advocates for specific US policies toward Israel and its neighbors, which is as perilous a fever from the (Very) "Old Country" as any.

- wildboy

May 12, 2010 at 10:06am

rhub: we must either kill every jihadi or die. leaves out the third option; wait them out. It worked magnificently versus Communism. This jihadi generation will grow old and die, will their children want to replicate their parents failure? And what then when the oil runs out? Without modernity they will have nothing, no hope or know how to conquer the west or to even benefit from it. The Koran shall not feed their children, nor water their crops. Maybe this worst ecological disaster in American history now unfolding can help us implement the necessary steps to deprive these jihadis of oil wealth, thereby hastening their end or their irrelevance. I doubt it though, Republicans are far, far too stupid.

- blackton

May 12, 2010 at 10:23am

Ginzy, it is indeed true that not every problem is solvable but that does not mean that existing problems cannot be made worse by bad actions or inaction. It seems to me that the problems of jihadism and the radical anti-Western mindset within the Islamic world have indeed been made worse since 2001, and most of this was not attributable to the Oslo process or Obama's rhetorical tropes.

- wildboy

May 12, 2010 at 10:25am

Wild-one, WADR you have know way of knowing that jihadism was "made worse" since 2001. Keep in mind that the first attempt at blowing up the World Trade Center was in 1993. Indeed jihadism has been brewing since the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920's, the radicalization and execution of Sayyid Qutb in the 1950's and 1960's, the fall of the Shah in the 1970's, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980's and so on. It's just that most Westerners were oblivious to the signs. Bernard Lewis coined the phrase "a clash of civilizations" in the 1950's and warned about the rise of radical Islamism in 1976. Yes, it is tempting to blame everything on Bush (much like Beilin blames Netanyahu for the collapse of Oslo -- in his mind Arafat cannot be at fault because that would mean that he, Beilin, exercised poor judgment and in Israel, the Labor-Meretz segment of the political spectrum cannot be wrong) but that ignores a lot of what had been going on before that and indeed brewing for most of the 20th century. hg

- ginzy

May 12, 2010 at 10:56am

Nihilistic theologies do not get defeated by force or violence; they thrive on it. I don't know how many people on this board have lived through a transformative revolution or under a millennarian theocracy. Or have had friends turned from America-loving teens one day and, two-weeks-of-immersion-in-theological-disputation later, into martyr-complexed youths ready to walk on mines (determined young man - he achieved his immediate purpose of being killed; don't know if he made it to the paradise he sought). But - I had high school friends who joined armed communist groups, others who were in the Basij (Islamic militia), still others who belonged to the MKO (a sort of Islamic Lenninist group, now in much reduced circumstances in Iraq). Based on who finally joined which group (and who finally died - in the Front, in street fighting, in terrorist attacks or at the end of a noose) it would have been impossible, in August 1978, to figure out who was going to join which group by August 1979. There was no pattern. Except that we all belonged to the Iranian urben upper middle class, all had highly educated parents, all had our (bright) futures under the Shah mapped out, and almost all had visited or lived in the West. And of course, many of us did not end up belonging to a terrorist group or getting involved in any violence or being political at all. I don't know which is the more telling point - the joiners or the abstainers - and what conclusions one can draw. We all sought Justice and Freedom and Peace and Equality and whatever; some of us more abstractly than others, some with more passion than others, some with more hate than others ... and I suppose it was the abstracters and the passionates and the haters who ended up in the terrorist groups, willing to kill and be killed for a cause. But I can't tell for sure. What I do know is that the killers would not have been - in fact, were not - deterred by the strength or the violence of the opposing force. The more bodies ended up on nooses, the more violence the groups got. Until finally the feeders into the groups despaired of violence. It was the hearts and the minds that changed and were changed. With my buddy, I knew there was something wrong when he did not bring me the copy of the Agatha Christie book that he had just found in the last remaining English bookshop in Tehran. (I had about fifty of these, and he had another ten, and we swapped them, and discussed the plots during chemistry class.) He was evasive, but I noticed a pamphlet about the afterlife he was reading. I asked him about it; he mumbled something about the meaning of life. He was fifteen and had spent his entire life, but for that term, in the US. His father was a doctor, his mother a university professor. I pressed him, but he did not engage, and one day he simply stopped coming to class. Two weeks later I saw him in fatigues; he averted his eyes and did not answer me when he saw me. Four months after that he was killed; one of the tens of thousands of mine-walkers.

- icarusr

May 12, 2010 at 11:07am

Ginzy, you perfectly state why the Ajami position appears to be one of simple defeatism, or even surrender: first, the problem is defined as existential, and then it is defined as unsolvable. Of course not all problems can be solved. What is heresy to me is believing that the difficulty of the task frees us from the duty to try. Furthermore, history is not inevitable. The failure of any particular solution proves neither that solution was impossible nor that the particular solution attempted was wrong. History is probability, not destiny, and it's made not by abstract supernatural forces but by individual people doing particular actions.

- rhubarbs

May 12, 2010 at 11:21am

Ginzy, do you really want to go there? Of course jihadism has become a worse problem since 2001 -- the evidence is overwhelming. Just look outside your window -- how big of a presence did Hamas have in the West Bank before the collapse of the Camp David talks, and how big is its influence now (hint -- big enough that Abbas and Fayyad insist on preconditions to peace talks that even Arafat eschewed, and won't even hold face-to-face talks with Israelis). A jihadist group rules Gaza, and there are even Al-Qaeda-sympathizing cells forming in Gaza under Hamas's nose. Al-Qaeda sympathizers have battled the Lebanese Army in Palestinian camps, and the jihadis of Hezbollah have a missile-armed army on Israel's northern border. There have been terrorist attacks in Jordan and Saudi Arabia (which had not been the case before 2001, except for the 1979 Mecca rebellion), and terrorism in Yemen has expanded greatly since 2001. Pakistan has been consumed by terrorism, and India has suffered horrific acts of jihadi violence in addition to low-level terrorism in Kashmir. Terror bombings have taken place in Indonesia -- something which never happened before in a country whose Islam was always perceived as being tolerant. Russia and the Northern Caucasus have suffered through periodic bouts of terrorism, much of it caused by radicalized Chechens and foreign jihadis. Terror bombings have been perpetrated in London and Madrid and numerous plots have been launched against airlines. Jihadi terrorists murdered Israeli tourists in the Sinai and Kenya and attempted to kill more with a missile that luckily missed a tourist jet. And did I mention Iraq?? Jihadis (Shia and Sunni) have murdered more people there than anything Saddam perpetrated in his last decade in power, if not his entire reign. Not all of this is George W. Bush's fault, but it should be clear to everyone whose last name is not Cheney that the Unites States' full-throated rhetorical and half-hearted military and diplomatic assault on Islamic radicalism from 2001 to 2009 did not stop the violence, and did not even curb it.

- wildboy

May 12, 2010 at 11:33am

"Not every problem is solvable, which I understand is a heresy to the liberal western mind-set." ginzy, you advance a philosophical proposition that applies perhaps very generally to the human condition. But mostly we are concerned with problems on a smaller scale, e.g. science and illness, the Cold War, prejudice against women, earthquakes in Haiti, and so on, none of which would have been dealt with in any way at all if we had started off from your position. But what most surprised me about your statement is that, of all the countries in the world, the one that seems most immediately indebted to the liberal western mind-set is Israel. Founding and buliding a democratic and economically vital society, to all intents and purposes from the basement up, in a fairly disadvantaged location and in a politically and militarily hostile context would seem to have demanded something other than conservative status-quo thinking or the desire for a quiet life in an ideologically monolithic community. And given that much rhetoric has been devoted right here to defending the liberal and western credentials of Israel, that makes it all the more baffling.

- ironyroad

May 12, 2010 at 2:58pm

"...the one that seems most immediately indebted to the liberal western mind-set is Israel. " When Jews were seen as the survivors of concentration camps this may have been the case. Now that they are ensconced in sovereignty and have the power to defend themselves vigorously and unblinkingly, the current Left cannot be counted upon to appreciate the positions of the post-WWII Left. Once the Jew has tried, and succeeded, to divest himself of his homelessness, he became the target of the Left, no longer a worthy cause celebre. You don't seem too familiar or concerned with the vicious and deeply troubling attacks upon Israel's legitimacy coming from the left. No one has as yet to propose a good answer as to why that is. This is just an aside. I couldn't let that statement go unchallenged.

- noga1

May 12, 2010 at 3:59pm

Just for clarification, then, I should have inserted an extra sentence after ". . . most immediately indebted to the liberal western mind-set is Israel" on the lines of "This, of course, as an historically objective fact, irrespective of what any particular individual or group may think is the case."

- ironyroad

May 12, 2010 at 4:51pm

Basman--thank you for pointing me to the terrific article by Johann Hari. This article should be read by everyone concerned with the problem of jihadism and its causes. Excellent!

- ProfEthan

May 12, 2010 at 4:59pm

malahat: "I think that only Islam can ... I live and hope, but I'm not optimistic." You're dead on. And it is not necessary to be optmistic; hope is strong enough. In Iran, the strongest and most challenge to the government-led and -run Islamist terror is coming from the clergy and the faithful. The secular opposition outside the country has neither the legitimacy nor the backing to do anything useful. And while the challenge to the terror is faith-based, the essence of the position being advanced is within the liberal tradition: the rule of law, freedom to dissent and, albeit within narrow parameters, freedom of faith. You can look at the ugly president and his ugly statements, and condemn the entire country; or you can see the millions in the street and hope that something good will come out that. And I think that the same analysis can be extended to the Muslim world. At least I hope.

- icarusr

May 12, 2010 at 5:23pm

What - Be an American Citizen and "Burn the fires in the home country?" Outrageous!!!! Or is it? Oh, I guess that rule applies only to naturalized citizens.....not persons born here, who prefer the "old country" Another one of those double-standards.

- OscarPeck

May 12, 2010 at 5:36pm

"I don't think Israel owes 'the liberal western mind-set' anything." malahat, I think you read "indebted" as meaning "grateful for," while I intended it more as "rooted in the values and dynamics of." Where did the ideas of constitutionality and the rule of law come from, if not the West? They weren't exactly growing all over the Ottoman Empire, waiting to be plucked like olives.

- ironyroad

May 12, 2010 at 5:52pm

"Where did the ideas of constitutionality and the rule of law come from, if not the West? " Seems I owe you an apology, ironyroad. My previous comment was in response to something you had not actually said. I thought you wrote: ...the one that seems most immediately indebted to the liberal Left mind-set is Israel. I guess I'm seeing things.

- noga1

May 12, 2010 at 6:28pm

It's hard to think of the code of Hammurabi as a constitutional precedent to the Magna Carta:) I think the term "constitutional" is a product of democratic thinking about rights. It is not a concept that Old Hammu would not have been much familiar with. One may point to a thinking about rights in Leviticus where there is a concern enshrined in law for the weaker members of society (the widow, the orphan, the slave). My very scholarly professor in Judaic Studies once analogized the Torah to the Declaration of Independence and the Talmud to the American Constitution.

- noga1

May 12, 2010 at 6:36pm

Correction: ...It is not a concept that Old Hammu would have been much familiar with.

- noga1

May 12, 2010 at 6:37pm

Noga and malahat -- upon mature reflection I think I want to back away from what I said a little, not in any real substance, but in any implication that the West (not a totally precise descriptor itself) is the only place that thought about law beyond the stage of autocratic will. Thus I don't really mean in any sense an "ethnic" west, more a political one which clearly Israel belongs to. I am curious about ginzy's response, though, if he feels like supplying one, as his comment (which admittedly was clearly more of an aside than a formulated statement) was the one that surprised me.

- ironyroad

May 12, 2010 at 7:37pm

ginzy at 9:30 am: "Not every problem is solvable, which I understand is a heresy to the liberal western mind-set." I may be wrong, but perhaps Ginzy was referring to the religion of the Enlightenment, wherein reason and science can solve every problem, when he wrote "liberal western mind-set". Or maybe Ginzy just meant the folly of post-modern Europeans and their American aficionados, who forget Europe needed 2,000 years of barbarian and Christian bloodshed before they finally nearly destroyed themselves in WW2 in order to start the beginning of a solution to stop the bloody conflicts. Now they just fling words, immigrants, and Euros at each other. I await egg throwing in Brussels, the Ukrainian contribution to conflict resolution. On the religion of the Enlightenment: "...the faith today that seems under the heaviest assault is more modern: the faith that natural and social science would lead humanity to an era of progress, security and peace. The religion of Enlightenment, born in Europe and North America in the 18th century, swept through the world faster than any of the faiths of the old prophets. ..." http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/05/07/its-a-crisis-of-faith-not-a-crisis-of-stocks/#comments

- K2K

May 12, 2010 at 8:14pm

Maybe I'm all wrong, but I find Mead's glib and fuzzy Kulturpessimismus a bit of a bore.

- ironyroad

May 12, 2010 at 9:39pm

well, irony, what else can one expect from an English Literature major who went on to study history on his own, without ever succumbing to the rigorous specialization of advanced degrees in the era where history and economics are forced into science? Mr. Mead is a relic in the 21st century, a somewhat free-thinking generalist. Some may find Mead a refreshing change from the silo-wonks and opinionators who dominate foreign policy analysis in the English language. I was just trying to help understand what Ginzy may have meant since we never know when Ginzy will re-appear at TNR. It's a big world, after all.

- K2K

May 12, 2010 at 11:14pm

I don't want to pre-empt what ginzy might say, K2K. What bothers me about his comment is probably something he might not even regard as significant. But Mead's piece just got up my nose. There are other free-thinking generalists I prefer. Springsteen with "Erie Canal," for instance. Or that hippie guy who was mayor of Tirane (Albania) a few years ago.

- ironyroad

May 13, 2010 at 12:42am

irony, enough. your insult to Mr. Mead is not funny. go back to the unitelligible discourse on literature while I find a cave somewhere to recover from over-exposure to "the liberal western mind-set."

- K2K

May 13, 2010 at 12:56am

ironyroad: I do believe you (finally) met your match.

- noga1

May 13, 2010 at 6:41am

"...I find Mead's glib and fuzzy Kulturpessimismus a bit of a bore." Did you also find Timothy Garton Ash's attack on Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an "enlightenment fundamentalist" (for having the guts to stand up to Islamofascism and the likes of Tariq Ramadan) equally a bore?

- noga1

May 13, 2010 at 6:57am

Maybe, just maybe, to the penultimate. I'll leave it to you to judge. As regards the ultimate -- I wasn't able to read the full Garton Ash text (it was a review of Buruma and Hirsi Ali in the NYRB) but I've read several commentaries on it by Hitchens and others. To that extent, it's a rather different creature from Mead's banality (Note: I'm not taking about Mead's writing in general, some of which I seem to recall liking) and the "bore" aspect is in this case not applicable as I haven't read the whole thing. I'm not sure that the two pieces really go together in any sensible way.

- ironyroad

May 13, 2010 at 1:08pm

"Sign and Sight" has the whole debate, if it interests you.

- noga1

May 13, 2010 at 2:55pm

"The student had initially posed a question to veteran political activist Horowitz, to which Horowitz responded by saying, I'm a Jew. The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we [Jews] will gather in Israel so he doesn't have to hunt us down globally. For or against it? The student responded, For it." http://blog.camera.org/archives/2010/05/muslim_student_supports_gather.html

- noga1

May 13, 2010 at 3:04pm

noga1 "The student had initially posed a question to veteran political activist Horowitz, to which Horowitz responded by saying, I'm a Jew. The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we [Jews] will gather in Israel so he doesn't have to hunt us down globally. For or against it? The student responded, For it." I don't think they have either the imagination nor the will to believe that tawdry evil minded Muslim student. Noga, most people don't care about that as passionately as I do or as you do. I just ordered Paul Berman's book "The Flight of the Intellectuals" which is reviewed in this coming Sunday's NY Times Book Review and which describes the surrender of many leading intellectuals to Islamicists. They call it being "liberal" or being for multiculturalism, but it's just cowardice. Some say they are bored with the whole issue, but what is boredom? It seems to me that it's an inability to face reality.

- jdyer

May 13, 2010 at 8:42pm

"Noga, most people don't care about that as passionately as I do or as you do. " The silence that follows my link attests to that. Boredom, or indifference. "Intelligent woman, on being offered a book dealing with antisemitism and German atrocities: “Don't show it me, please don't show it to me. It'll only make me hate the Jews more than ever.” http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/antisemitism/english/e_antib

- noga1

May 13, 2010 at 10:00pm

The comment by her professor seems to miss the point by an Irish mile, although she/he may genuinely believe the student didn't mean what she said. Incidentally, what was the question the student posed to Horowitz, which everyone seems so cagey about revealing? The AV link appears to be inactive.

- ironyroad

May 13, 2010 at 10:01pm

She asked David Horowitz to clarify some statement written in material he had distributed before the talk and which she found much more interesting than the talk itself, in which she claimed that he linked the Muslim Student Association to jihadi terrorist organizations. He then asks her if she supports Hamas and she answered: do you want to put me on the cross? You know I cannot answer this question without risk of being arrested. And the rest is as reported. the link works for me, btw.

- noga1

May 13, 2010 at 10:22pm

Ok I've watched it -- I get it now. She wants to challenge some statement he made in his publicity about MSA; he asks her -- as a kind of condition -- if she's willing to condemn Hamas/HB; she complains that she can't express her opinion on Hamas as it could open her to arrest; he explains that he made it easier for an earlier questioner at a different meeting by posing the "gather Jews in Israel" question; he puts that question to her; she answers positively, essentially agreeing with the quote from Hizbollah leader that it saves hunting Jews down throughout the world. Assuming she understood the question, she has basically conceded that she's in favor of annihilating the Jewish population in Israel.

- ironyroad

May 14, 2010 at 12:44am

She impresses me as an insolent, thoughtless and unthinking sort of person. She wants to come off as civil and broad-minded (...I want to thank you for coming here to present another point of view bla bla bla...) but that's as long as she can contain her bile. The next statement is an insult to the speaker, and then she answers his question not simply but in a metaphorical way. Where did she come up with that cross thing? Why would she even bring it up? I mean, a pious Muslim girl and the first thing that comes into her mind in an exchange with a Jewish speaker is Jesus? And what's her teacher about excusing her and attacking the speaker? Shouldn't he/she be doing some repair job on her student teaching her about history and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? One can make some excuses for the student being young and awkward and under pressure in a public moment, but the teacher was writing presumably in her office or home, and having had time to hear about the incident and to think about her response.

- noga1

May 14, 2010 at 6:39am

In ironic coincidence, I encountered this videoclip this morning. Quite amazing: http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/27550

- noga1

May 14, 2010 at 10:14am

Anita Casvantes-Bradford, the teacher who defended that Muslim girl, is a Ph.D. student in Caribbean and Cuban History at UCSD, not on the regular faculty. You can guess her political opinions, and why she did not do what noga1 suggests, and what any responsible faculty-member would do. I've seen the clip and it remains possible to me that the student was indeed hurried by Horowitz, and perhaps didn't hear or didn't understand the question very well. But it's also possible that she did hear and understand Horowitz perfectly well, and answered exactly what she meant. On these questions the video posting seems a bit ambiguous to me. But if her vile statement wasn't what she meant, she could issue a correction, a statement to that effect. I've searched the Net and haven't found one. Perhaps someone else has found one?

- ProfEthan

May 14, 2010 at 11:15am

Moving on to what he said in Manhattan last night: "...President Obama has a metaphor for Republicans: they are like bad drivers, he says, who still want the keys the car. Mr. Obama tested out that line and a few others as he previewed his election-year message to voters during a high-priced fund-raiser on Thursday night at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan. He scooped up $1.3 million to help Democrats win election to Congress. One hundred eighty five people – including 23 lawmakers, many from New York — attended the dinner. The price tag was $15,000 for individuals, $30,400 for couples and $50,000 for V.I.P. couples, who were treated to a private reception with the president. “They’ve done their best to gum up the works, to make things look broken to say no to every single thing,’’ Mr. Obama told the crowd. “Their basic attitude has been if Democrats lose, we win. So after they drove their car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No! They can’t drive!’’ ..." copied from Sheryl Gay Stolberg's blog at NYT. No idea of how many Immigrants, Jews, or Wall Street bankers were at this fundraiser... :)

- K2K

May 14, 2010 at 12:21pm

Compare and contrast: "This girl is actually my student; I know her to be an intelligent, moral young woman who believes in peace. I do not support any organization that advocates violence against any specific group, nor do I believe that my student would do so. As a peace loving, Catholic teacher, I'm saddened that this speaker--her elder--manipulated the conversation in this fashion to make her look like someone she isn't, out of an egotistical desire to prove his own point, rather than engaging in a constructive dialogue. A perfect example of why the peace process is limping foward so painfully. " "The seventh floor was where the noose was put up; the idea being, if people can sneak in and do something hateful, we can sneak in with something beautiful and loving,” Casavantes Bradford, who organized the event, said. “I wanted to have a spiritual response to the spiritual damage done to the library space.” I wonder if she is working, even as we write, on an appropriate symbol for repairing the spiritual damage inflicted by her intelligent, moral student who believes in peace.

- noga1

May 14, 2010 at 12:32pm

Link: http://www.theusdvista.com/news/ucsd-reacts-to-racial-incidents-1.1220920

- noga1

May 14, 2010 at 12:34pm

the peril of jumping to conclusions in the case of Faisal Shahzad, who apparently has still not been arraigned on any formal charges. The conclusion of The Atlantic's just posted "12 Days Later: What We Know About a Taliban Link to Times Square" "...As Congress puzzles over the possibility of a Shahzad-TTP link, the administration is moving forward on two policy initiatives based on their assertion of a strong connection. The first is officially designating the TTP as a foreign terrorist group, which would allow the U.S. to freeze any related assets. The second is pressuring Pakistan's military to launch an offensive in the border regions where the TTP is based. Without a Shahzad-TTP connection, the rationale for both policies still makes sense: The TTP has claimed many terror attacks within Pakistan, and a Pakistani offensive in the border regions could help stifle the Taliban groups attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But the longer the administration goes forward basing such major policy decisions on Shahzad's alleged links to organized terror, when legislators remain unconvinced and even top administration officials give conflicting interpretations, the more they risk ultimately jeopardizing public support for those policies." http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/05/12-days-later-what-we-know-about-a-taliban-link-to-times-square/56738/

- K2K

May 14, 2010 at 12:43pm

Just coming back to the student at UCSD, she was definitely making an odd parallel between "cross" and "arrest" suggesting, what? Her attempts at irony were clumsy and adolescent. That she's a recent convert to Islam? I think there's maybe a 10% chance she didn't understand the import of the question in a somewhat confused exchange, but that's about it. I think a lot of faculty would maybe respond in some kind of protective mode, if they liked the student and felt she had made a mis-step. As I get older, I get more conscious of how damn young the students are, and the nature of 20-year olds' hyperbole, and I tend to take that into account. However, echoing a call to mass murder is unambiguously over the line, and I would say that very clearly to any student of mine who might ask my support or advice.

- ironyroad

May 14, 2010 at 2:21pm

"That she's a recent convert to Islam?" She pronounced her name in a heavy Arab accent. It is possible that she is an Arab Christian convert to Islam but I doubt it. The separation lines between Arab Christians and Arab Muslims are very thick. It is considered worse than conversion to Judaism and is extremely rare. A friend of mine, PhD candidate, was teaching intro to Islam. Most of the class were Muslims. She had many problematic moments with the students. One time one of them came to see her at her office, 8 pm. She was th eonly one still working at the hour on that floor. He complained about a grade. She explained that there was nothing she could do. He said he had a gun in his backpack. When he saw how frightened she was, he said he was just joking and left. The teacher reported the incident to the prof who was in charge of the Islamic studies program, who told her: it is just something they say. You shouldn't worry about it...

- noga1

May 14, 2010 at 2:40pm

I didn't catch the heavy Arab accent -- but I'm not so expert on that. Her fluency and cadences in English suggest some time in the U.S., though. A friend of mine in my grad program (at UCLA) was teaching a class as a TA. In office hours one of his students commented that if he didn't get a reasonable grade for some assignment or other, then he was "going to grab an AK-47." My friend reported this to the prof in charge of the class, who said "OK." Jim thought it was going to end there but the next day he was called into the department chair's office, who wanted him to explain again what had happened -- this time with the university police on the speakerphone. The chair said something like "better to be overreacting now than trying to explain everything when they are picking the bodies up from the hallway."

- ironyroad

May 14, 2010 at 7:16pm

That's what I thought should have happened, but did not. When my friend told me about the incident and the prof's reaction, and was wondering what to do I suggested to her that she should tell it to at least two other persons within department. By way of covering herself, just in case something really did happen, in the spirit of the maxim: sunlight is the disinfectant.

- noga1

May 14, 2010 at 8:15pm

BTW, her fluency suggests she probably grew up in the US and went to school there. My daughter speaks Canadian but when she pronounces her Hebrew name she does so in a Sabra accent. That is, the "cheit" is pronounced properly :)

- noga1

May 14, 2010 at 8:19pm

I just looked today at that link to the color footage of Israel in 1948 -- it's pretty amazing. The notion of an Israeli Woodstock (or Monterey Pop? more beach-like?) gave me a moment of anarchic laughter in my too-warm office this afternoon. It's too warm because I hate the crappy 1960s air conditioning system that makes you think you are sharing a room with a WW1 biplane engine.

- ironyroad

May 14, 2010 at 11:16pm

Immigration: Some interesting, inconvenient (to some) history: "The article goes on to highlight the “extraordinary surplus of the Government and the immense increase in the Customs revenue”, which are attributed to “the increasing immigration”. Quoting an “authoritative estimate”, the number of Jewish immigrants for 1934 is given as 50,000; compared to 38,000 in 1933, and 15,600 in 1932. But the report also notes: “The immigration, however, is not restricted to Jews. There has been a steady infiltration into Palestine of Arabs from Syria (the Hauran) and from Trans-Jordan. And it is notable that the illicit immigration of the non-Jews recorded in the report of the Government is more than double that recorded for the Jews.” Obviously, this means that if some 100 000 Jews immigrated to Palestine between 1932-1934, more than 200 000 Arabs immigrated illegally in the same period – and, interestingly enough, some of these illegal Arab immigrants came from the very part of Palestine that the British had decided to cut off from the Mandate area to create an exclusively Arab state from which Jews would be barred. Of course, even back then, it was fashionable to claim that Jewish immigration caused terrible hardship for the “natives” of Palestine – but, as one contemporary British official dryly noted: “This illegal [Arab] immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.” http://cifwatch.com/2010/05/14/how-about-some-facts-on-the-%E2%80%9Cright-of-return%E2%80%9D/

- noga1

May 15, 2010 at 10:39am

"...my too-warm office this afternoon." My own tiny office is so cold that I had to turn on the heat. But then it got too stuffy so I turned on the small fan. I suspect this perpetual vacillation between hot and cold will continue until the 15 of July, when summer will finally have made up it mind whether to stay awhile..

- noga1

May 15, 2010 at 10:44am

noga, thanks for the link on immigration in and out of Palestine. The only thing missing is the current invitation by Libya for her formerly expelled Jews to return to Libya. How can anyone pass up THAT solution to RoR? (inject sarcasm) sounds like you have northern Wisconsin climate, where summer lasts for two weeks in August!

- K2K

May 15, 2010 at 12:31pm

There is a passage in one of Frederick Forsyth's novels in which he writes something like this: People say that there are only two seasons in Vermont, July and winter. But, he continues, those who really live in Vermont know better and they will tell you that there are only two seasons in Vermont, Winter, and then, the 15th of July.

- noga1

May 15, 2010 at 1:14pm