Comments on: What’s at stake when anti-Zionism aims for academic respectability?

By: Liat Nagar

Liat Nagar — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 01:24:32 +0000

Kevin Charles Herbert,
It should have traction, but doesn’t, and there lies the problem! You can consider moral relativism from a different perspective to yours. It need not be used as an excuse for ignoring misdeeds. Do you wish to hide behind your perspective of it as an excuse to ignore the facts of Ben Cohen’s you quoted? Do you wish to ignore historical accuracy and dismiss historical events in order to twist the present into a different shape? The present is very much formed by the past before it becomes past itself; although it requires response pertinent to the different problems that have emerged, it cannot be expurgated as you wish it to be. The fact that you find it objectionable is beside the point. The history we are referring to in relation to the modern State of Israel is young, hardly ancient, and matters very much. Although ancient history matters too.

You can’t escape relativism, KCH. Even when we prefer not, psychologically it always plays its part, of its own volition reasserting what was there before if departed from.

By: Kevin Charles Herbert

Kevin Charles Herbert — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 06:35:47 +0000

Ben Cohen:

You write “It’s also a sickeningly immoral one: barely four hours away from the bars and coffee shops of Florentin is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since World War II—to be precise, in Syria, where the number of refugees and displaced (more than half the country) makes you wonder in despair why the Palestinian Arab refugee population created by the exterminationist war launched against Israel by the Arab states in 1948 is still the favored obsession of academics ostensibly specializing in the Middle East as a whole.”

Do you really expect that such blatant moral relativism has any traction in 2015?

By: Liat Nagar

Liat Nagar — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 10:41:46 +0000

A really well-written, informed article, Ben Cohen, infused with such calm. I admire your capacity for calm in what is proving to be an escalating roller-coaster ride of hatred, vitriol and determined effort to rid the world of Israel. What I find difficult to comprehend are the number of ex and/or resident Israelis who join the club. To some extent I can posit guesses as to why some Jews in the Diaspora over the years have turned against themselves and their Jewish inheritance, but Israelis …?!

That nobody wants to listen to or consider the facts that colour the whole situation differently is distressing to an extreme.

By: Mary Krantzler

Mary Krantzler — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 00:50:51 +0000

It belittles the esteem of Southhampton University to host such a conference. Israel is a legitimate State and no such conference will change that fact. Why academics, ex-Israelis and Arabs have the nerve to hold such a meeting when the Israelis have accomplished so much in the 70 years of statehood, I don’t know. Jealousy? There are so many Arab States that refused to take in the Palestinians who,encouraged by their leaders,fled when Israel was attacked by the surrounding Arab countries after the U.N. Voted in favor of a Jewish Homeland. Israel has been attacked by Arab countries so many times and each time Israel has been the victor. Instead of just keeping the spoils Israel is willing to share them with the Palestinians, Remember, no Arab country was willing to do this!!!!!! Consider that!