User:Elizmr/drafts
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[edit] talk page
Personal Attacks:
1. Klonimos you are talking out your *ss. --csloat 00:30, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Also, Lee, is it really necessary to put stuff like "what's your problem?" in your edit summaries? I know it is probably a little amusing and fun to do, but it takes away from the collegiality of Wikipedia. Thanks for considering, elizmr 12:57, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Re. comments in the edit summaries. No apologies. If someone dumps a cheap smear job into a bio and then repeatedly removes the subject's defence they deserve to be soundly and loudly rapped. --Lee Hunter 13:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
About your last comment, I don't think Wikipedia policies would agree that anyone deserves to be "soundly and loudly rapped"--could you find me a policy stating that and I'll stop bothering you about civility???
elizmr 14:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I think I understand what is going on here: truthiness. ;-) I think it is best to take this ridiculous POV stuff to RfC. --LuckyLittleGrasshopper 22:19, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I think you have specifically targeted Cole to smear since you are ideologically opposed to him. --LuckyLittleGrasshopper 22:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
WTF is a "Muslim apologist"? That's crap....--csloat 00:29, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
So you have translated the text yourself? I didn't think so. ...You may believe your Farsi is better than Cole's--csloat 05:28, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
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Citation not "needed" if the reader, well, reads....
Commodore, I'm not sure why you didn't see the ref to Cole changing his blog after the fact in Joffe's article. Here is a snip where he mentions it:
"Cole: According to the September 11 Commission report, Al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a punishment on the U.S. for supporting Ariel Sharon's iron fist policies toward the Palestinians. Bin Laden had wanted to move the operation up in response to Sharon's threatening visit to the Temple Mount, and again in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which left 4,000 persons homeless. Khalid Shaikh Muhammad argued in each case that the operation just was not ready.—July 8, 2005"
MEQ: Martin Kramer points out that the 9-11 Commission determined the hijacking plan was conceived by early 1999, that Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount took place in September 2000 when he was head of the opposition, and that the Jenin operation took place in April 2002, seven months after 9/11. After these factual problems were pointed out, Cole surreptitiously changed his original posting. [33]"
I'll put in the cite to Kramer instead. Please forgive me, but I'm going to head off a few of your arguments against this proactively:
1. Please don't say that Kramer can't be used because he is a blogger and the cite is from his blog and blogs aren't good sources. The Kramer cite actually underlines WHY blogs aren't good sources using Cole's changing his own blog after the fact as an example. This whole article is about someone who rose to prominence as a blogger, so it is appropriate to cite some blogs when we are discussing him.
2. Please don't say that Kramer can't be used by saying he is part of a big organized and powerful worldwide right wing Jewish conspiracy who doesn't believe what he is writing but is only saying this stuff to discredit and silence Cole. That has already been done to death by Cole himself. (and please don't say I am only editing the way I do because of MY ideology; that has already been done too by Grasshopper, above, and both of you would probably be suprised to know my politics)
3. Please don't say that Kramer can't be used because Cole is smarter, Cole is more knowledgable, Cole speaks more Arabic, etc etc. Cole has already done that to death as well.
I apologize in advance if I am taking the low road here. elizmr 13:33, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Frankly, however, your edits make it clear that your intention is to turn this into a hit piece. --csloat 16:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
This is a hit piece on Cole, wickedly done. Usually people attempt to be transparent about it. It's funny because Elizmr just did the same to the MEMRI piece but from a pro-MEMRI perspective. Is this an operation in an "information warfare" battle? I think so and of course it may be impossible to confirm whether it is formally such or not (i.e. is Elizmr being paid to do this), but in spirit it sure it. --70.48.242.108 18:17, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
One of the points seems to be to bring people of different opinions together in a community to write articles and interface with each other. And if everyone would just calm down and treat people who might have a different point of view with some respect as well-intentioned human beings it might actually work. Wikipedia is not anyone's blog. There's gonna be some stuff you don't agree with. Get over it.elizmr 18:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
That is complete nonsense, sorry. Have you read Cole's academic work? Do you know his reputation in Middle Eastern Studies? Do you realize he was elected to lead the main organization in that field? Do you recognize that he is sought after by media outlets for commentary on current as well as historical events? Have you ever heard him speak on any of these issues, or attended one of his classes? If you really want to improve this page, why not look into these things rather than dwelling on silly blog controversies that will be meaningless in a year or two?--csloat 20:25, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
What part of add in more about his academic background and publications don't you understand? The simplest explanation is usually the correct one, but not always, so cite this information, add it to the article according to WP policies, and you'll not only get no hassle from me (or anyone else I suspect), but I'll help you defend your edits. Armon 12:57, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
You have so much time to dedicate to Wikipedia that it is difficult to counter your POV. Do you have a day job? If so how you do find hours upon hours to dedicate to Wikipedia every day? You seem intelligent, and supposidely you have a PhD or MD from Columbia, not the type to slum it on Wikipedia day in and day out fighting battles with random individuals to shape a supposidely NPOV encyclopedia. --LuckyLittleGrasshopper 18:56, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
My opinion is that Wikipedia would be the best place to target an information warfare campaign disguised as independent editors. Wikipedia is sort of trusted and it is easy to edit. It is ironic that you started with MEMRI - an organization that is run by former intelligence operatives and then you spread to other articles that attack MEMRI. If I was doing this it would make sense to edit other wikipedia articles to ensure broad coverage in order to allow for becoming an administrator someday. Being able to shape the publics perception via coordinated editing of Wikipedia sounds like the perfect place, especially for those fighting information operations or psychological operation battles -- which is what the Israel-Palestinian conflict is all about. While it can be considered to be a conspiracy theory, it sounds like a viable one. It falled into the category of unproveable. If I were doing this I would deny it, because to otherwise would serve to deligitimize my edits in a way. I would also attempt some collusion, just slight enough to fall under the radar, in difficult battles. It is all possible, Wikipedia is wide open to such attacks. It is an interesting theoretical possibility eh? --LuckyLittleGrasshopper 19:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Grasshopper, I find the above paranoid and overly personal. elizmr 19:12, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Anyways, I striked the personal attacks -- I apologize. --LuckyLittleGrasshopper 19:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Grasshopper, I was giving you examples so you would understand what I was saying. Thank you for striking your attacks. It is a start and a good one. elizmr 19:52, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
[
I'm sorry but this is just awkward English and very misleading. "Claims of use of x theory" just sounds silly. Really this is simply an accusation of anti-semitism. --Lee Hunter 02:22, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
If you would actually read Cole, rather than just reading right wing critiques of Cole, you would see that he actually knows a few things. But that isn't the issue, and you guys seem to be acting intentionally obtuse about the issue. ...Your comment "by his own criteria" Elizmr is total BS. Really. ...Finally, Elizmr, you have a lot of nerve to talk about anyone else's editorial integrity. I have yet to see a single edit by you here that even pretends to try to take Cole seriously as a scholar or commentator. All you have contributed is attempt after attempt to give voice to criticism of Cole from the right wing blogosphere.--csloat 20:20, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
The only reason anyone would label this a "controversy" is to slyly use it to make Cole look bad (and it seems that all the alleged controversies have been written with that sole purpose in mind). If you guys are really so interested in editing the article about Juan Cole, why don't you do something useful, like read one of his books, and post a summary here?--csloat 09:36, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
First, what the hell are you talking about? csloat
Please stop characterizing any criticism of Cole as "right wing". It is dismissive, it is insulting (to me), it is ironic, and it is just plain wrong. elizmr 18:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Your constant lecturing about what people should and shouldn't do is getting very tiresome. --Lee Hunter 18:17, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Well then, we're equal because I'm tired of your dismissiveness, bullying, and non-collegial behavior. And I'm especially tired of your avoiding discussion of substantive matters in favor of these negative and attacking quips. elizmr 18:26, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Moreover, by reducing Hunter's comments to personal attacks on yourself, you are unnecessarily personalizing this discussion..--CSTAR 01:58, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Your first 550 edits or so shows a very narrow focus. That's fine, but if you want people to take anything you say seriously about POV, a litle more experience on your part might help.--CSTAR 15:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
And now we have Isariq presenting the most bizaare distortion of Cole's views (claiming that Cole said that American Neocon Jews can't be trusted etc. Good grief. What rubbish.) with a bunch of cites that don't even remotely support the edit. And you ask ME to be collegial?--Lee Hunter 19:22, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm asking YOU to be collegial. Try something other than assuming bad faith, pushing the revert button, and calling someone's work bad for a change. Making an edit you don't like does not mean that I. behaved in an uncollegial manner. elizmr 19:36, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
You, Armon and Isariq have an obvious agenda to try and fill the article with as much critical information as possible. That's fine. But if you stubbornly pursue this agenda by reinserting dubious material again and again (two examples: Armon has several times today reinserted the bit about questioning Cole's Hebrew language skills even though the source is from an unknown student blogger and Isarig has again reverted back to some wildly distorted misrepresentations of Cole's statements). As far as I'm concerned, the bad faith is being proven again and again. Meanwhile you keep whining that I'm not being collegial. Frankly, I'm fed up and in no mood to cater to your concept of collegiality. --Lee Hunter 19:53, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
As it stands, this is the worst article I have ever seen on Wikipedia. The first 10 or 20 lines contain some useful info, the entire remaining article looks like a propaganda hatchet job by some angry loudmouths. -- Icedtea1954
that is exactly what this article has become, in a few short days, thanks to a couple of editors who are clearly only familiar with Cole because of right wing attacks on his weblog.--csloat 23:19, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
I do notice that your edits, like elizmrs, seem designed to portray Cole's views in the worst possible light.--csloat 23:45, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
I read the article very closely, by unlike you, I respect WP'S NPOV, and am not impressed by innuendo. ... - surely you can do better that this innuendo Isarig 22:58, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
And BTW, learn to read. Isarig 03:10, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Once again, you are incorrect. --Lee Hunter 14:12, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes I read it, but that's not the issue, and your challenge is totally irrelevant, which is why I'm not going to go research it. .--csloat 08:21, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Specious argument Lee -Cole agreed. Armon 13:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Your substituting an ad hominem attack on my "bad faith motivation", for an actual argument (simply repeating the same dubious claim, in slightly different ways) -is noted. Armon 04:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Ad hominem attack? Good heavens. A little touchy aren't we? It's not like I accused you of being a Canadian or something. --Lee Hunter 17:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
with in the article proper. Cole's point of view should be expressed, before it is attacked. In addition, Cole's positions should be presented in a balanced way - is the Ahmadinejad issue really Cole's second most covered topic? The whole article is way off balance and totally inverted in terms of how it has been written. This reads more like an attack piece than a balanced NPOV encyclopaedia article. Guettarda 15:22, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Guettarda's analysis of the issues with the article. This needs to fixed immediately. FeloniousMonk 15:27, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Some of these problems could be fixed simply by finding more mainstream sources other than CampusWatch, if anyone feels very strongly about including those sections as such, it would help enormously if they could provide additional sources making the same claims. JoshuaZ 15:37, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually the main issue to me is structural. The main issue to me isn't the criticism or the source, it's the balance and structure of the article. The article is, after all, called Juan Cole not Views of critics of Juan Cole. Guettarda 15:54, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree completely. As I mentioned in a different topic a few days ago, the Controversy section should not account for 90% of the article's length -- it throws the article off balance. bcasterline t 16:05, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
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latest Isarig edit
Isarig added the exchange with Solanieh with the edit summary "It shows that Cole's interpretation that this about ending the occupation of Jerusalem is wrong. Either both quotes stay, or both go." This is false. Cole's interpretation is that "wiped off the map" is supposed to be "disappear from the pages of history." The comment that it is focused on Jerusalem only is a Hitchens obfuscation -- Cole makes clear that his problem with Hitchens' interpretation is not about focusing on Jerusalem. Rather, Cole's interp is that the phrase "vanish form the pages of history" constitutes a description of what the future holds in a grand historical sense -- not in the sense of "we will wipe them off the map." I don't see any need to continue Hitchens' obfuscation with the exchange that follows, since it does not in any way refute Cole's argument. The other quote stays, however, since it clearly addresses the issue of the translation being interpreted as a threat, which is how Hitchens' position sees it. Also, Isarig has changed the wording to say "that the remark was inticative of genocidal plans" -- first, there is the embarrassing spelling error that Isarig keeps reintroducing; second, the word "interpretation" is more on point here, since that is what they are taking issue with. Finally, Isarig, why are you continuing with this silliness when even the MEMRI translation supports Cole?--csloat 03:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Wow, we've sunk to flaming editors for an 'embarrassing spelling error'. I guess you really have no case if this is what you have left. Ok, enough being civil with you, you're not worthy of it. Start reading Cole, sonny. The quote you claim is not Cole's but Hitchens' obfuscation is right in Cole's original post on the topic: "Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time." The quote from the CNN interview clearly and decisively shows Cole is compeletly and utterly wrong. It stays. Isarig 03:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Please see WP:CIV; if you do not feel I am worthy of civility, please do not interact with me. I was not flaming you for your spelling error; I was suggesting that it is problematic that you changed a sentence, including an embarrassing spelling error, which you insisted upon in your revert, displaying a carelessness in editing that we could do without. Everyone makes spelling errors, but few people insist on reverting to them after they have been changed. Anyway I didn't mean to suggest that it was that important, only that you were quick on the revert trigger. And it seems that you have still not bothered to correct your spelling error, which makes me wonder whether you are more interested in improving the article or enforcing a particular point of view on it.
Substantively, you are flat out wrong. Thanks for the quote, but I did not suggest Cole did not use the word "Jerusalem." My point was that the important difference in translation is not about the occupation of Jerusalem but rather about the difference between "we will wipe you off the map" and "you must be erased from the page of time." Whether "you" refers to "Israel" or "the occupation of Jerusalem" is irrelevant to Cole's point about the difference in translation. Certainly you are capable of seeing that? I am sure Hitchens is, which is why I think his discussion of that point is an obfuscation.--csloat 06:45, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
By the way, you might want to read this. csloat
I found this interesting.
Anyway, this was what I was going to bring up with you earlier on your talk page. You wanted the Iranian response included -fine, but now, with redundant CNN "official" apologia, and the MEMRI quote, you're tipping into OR and using WP to make a point, which, in fact, the cites don't support. 1. "Zionist state" = majority Jewish state = Israel, and 2. The MEMRI take is a wash for both sides -not support for Cole as the edit implies. Re-read the Hitchens piece, he wrote "Quite possibly, "wiped off the map" is slightly too free a translation of what he originally said, and what it is mandatory for his followers to repeat." So the fact that MEMRI uses a different phrase is a moot point because they read the speech the same as Hitchens. MEMRI's headline: "Iranian President at Tehran Conference: 'Very Soon, This Stain of Disgrace [i.e. Israel] Will Be Purged From the Center of the Islamic World – and This is Attainable'". On top of that, I honestly think it's just bloating the section. Armon 13:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
(1) the lnk to Cole's blog is interesting, but totally irrelevant to this conversation, as far as I can tell. (2) I agree this is bloat; the whole section should be deleted. But if it is to be included, we should make clear both sides of the "debate." (3) You seem bent on continuing the same obfuscation that Isarig supports above. Yet it appears to me that the important difference in translation - the phrase Cole refers to as possibly coming from a Persian poem - is not about whether "Israel" or "Jerusalem" is at risk but about whether Iran is threatening to destroy Israel or whether they are citing prophesy. And the link I added above from BTCnews quotes Hitchens directly indicating that he actually agrees with Cole on this latter point, despite his phony pyrotechnics in this phony "debate."--csloat 16:02, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
(1) I agree, which is why I deleted your recent Hitchens quote. (2) Absolutely, but we also need to stay on topic. (3) I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be obfuscating. Hitchens (rightly or wrongly) took Cole to task for "reinterpreting" a translation of the speech seemingly in order to hide the fact Iran wants Israel gone, period. Instead, Cole suggested Iran just wanted Israel out of Jerusalem and back to the pre-1967 borders -or, it was just a poetic rhetorical flourish. Hitchens therefore calls Cole an "apologist" who can't read English, Cole calls Hitchens a warmonger and a drunk. -are we clear so far. The MEMRI translation (which is disputably neutral BTW) gives a bit for both -on the one hand, their translation is closer to Cole's (ie no "wipe of the map") but on the other, they clearly read the speech as call for the "destruction of Israel". If Hitchens earlier called this sort of Iranian talk "routine bullshit" it's irrelevant to the argument because what Cole claimed, was that they weren't calling for the "destruction of Israel". That's what the argument is about. Armon 11:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
(1) is a non sequitur. The Hitchens quote was brought up by Cole in the debate with Hitchens; it is an on point response. The Cole link you presented was totally irrelevant to the discussion, as far as I can tell. (2) The quote was on topic. (3) Hitchens is the one obfuscating. Cole did not suggest Iran just wanted the pre-67 borders; that is you believing Hitchens' obfuscation. Cole is no fan of Iran, but he does not believe Iran is a threat to Israel in a military sense. He was pointing to a non-military interpretation of the passage which is evident when it is translated more literally. I don't think Cole disagrees that Iran is calling for the destruction of Israel; it is more a question of whether Israel will disappear from history through God's will or whether Iran will attack Israel to make it happen. Cole interprets the passage as meaning the former, and the more literal translation supports that interpretation. Your comment about MEMRI "clearly" reading this as a call for the destruction of Israel begs the question. What Cole claimed is that they were not threatening the destruction of Israel; there is a difference, and it has nothing at all to do with apologetics.--csloat 19:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
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Removal of Cole's response and comments of supporters
So what's up with deleting Cole's response to his critics and the comments of his supporters? Are we only allowed to add criticism? I think not. May I remind you that the subject of this article is Juan Cole, not the rightwing attack on Cole. Wolcott's comment, as it happens, was specifically about Cole (and also addressed one of the right wing attacks) --Lee Hunter 17:01, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Cole's response to his critics is fine for inclusion. Wolcott's cheerleading, OTOH, is irrelevant. It adds no content to the debate. It provides no arguments, not even along the lines of Cole's Ad Hominem arguments. All it is, is Wolcott's saying "I like Cole". Isarig 17:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
So what you're saying is that it's fine to put in remarks by people who find things to bash (the supposed anti-semitism), but not remarks by people who find things that they like (a comment about Cole's ability to flatten a critic)? Hardly seems fair and balanced to me. Aside from which, this IS, in case you're forgetting, an article about the person called Juan Cole. Wolcott was speaking directly about Cole - he was describing what kind of person he is. That's far more relevant for a bio article than comments from people who go into spasms because Cole translates one word differently than someone else.--Lee Hunter 17:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
yes, that is exactly what I am saying, and is the accpeted practice in WP. Someone criticizing a pundit for making anti-semitic comments is a criticism of the pundit's views which belongs on his WP article. Someone cheerleading a pundit and saying "I like the way he delivers a righteous smackdown" is just that - cheerleading, and has no place in an encyclopedia. Isarig 18:05, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
There is nothing in WP guidelines that precludes favorable comments. You can call it "cheerleading" if you like, but it's really just a favorable assessment of one aspect of the person called Juan Cole. --Lee Hunter 18:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Feel free to point out the argument being made by Wolcott as it relates to the topic, which is "Intellectual standards and integrity". This is just cheerleading and has no place in an encyclopedia. Isarig 18:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
You keep repeating this word "cheerleading" as if it actually means something. Wolcott made an observation about Cole's handling of the dispute and about Cole's debating skill. By calling it "cheerleading" I can only assume that your objection is that his observation casts Cole in a positive light. I'm sorry but that does not provide the slightest justification for removing the quote. --Lee Hunter 18:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Feel free to point out the argument being made by Wolcott as it relates to the topic, which is "Intellectual standards and integrity". This is just cheerleading and has no place in an encyclopedia. Isarig
The topic of the article is Juan Cole. The subheads within the article are arbitrary shifting divisions. Wolcott was making a comment about the subject of the article (Juan Cole, in case you've already forgotten) and his comment was in the context of the dispute mentioned in this section, which makes a fine place to put it. Over to you Isarig. It's your turn to say "this is just cheerleading". Go for it. --Lee Hunter 19:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
The topic of the article is Juan Cole but the subhead we are in is "Intellectual standards and integrity". If you feel the Goldberg-Cole debate belongs in another "arbitrary shifting division" - you can edit the article to imprve it and reduce the arbitrary nature of it. If you think Wolcott's comment about Cole (he's capable of "administering a righteous punk smackdown") is noteworthy on its own, you should add it in the intro section describing Cole, or in the section describing his extra-curricular activities, and see how long that lasts. I doubt many editors will support such blatant contentless cheerleading, and I'm guessing this will open the door for many negative comments on Cole along the lines of "Cole's an asshole", culled from various anti-Cole blogs, but I'm willing to entertain that option. But if you feel this commentary contains relevant arguments in the context of the Goldberg-Cole issue, then please point out the relevancy. Does Wolcott address the issues raised by Goldberg? Does he expand upon the rebuttal offered by Cole? does he say anything other than "I like Cole"?
I think that the Wolcot thing is ok. He is saying that Cole is good at taking people down in a nasty and humorous way, which he certainly is. I think it underlines something about Cole that is very true from reading his blog and salon articles, etc. Cole isn't really one to address a detractors points seriously one by one in a dry and dispassionate way. elizmr 01:10, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
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Wikipedia:3RR violation
The relevant policy clause is as follows:
Reverting, in this context, means undoing the actions of another editor or other editors in whole or part. It does not necessarily mean taking a previous version from history and editing that. A revert may involve as little as adding or deleting a few words or even one word. Even if you are making other changes at the same time, continually undoing other editors' work counts as reverting. "Complex partial reverts" refer to reverts that remove or re-add only some of the disputed material while adding new material at the same time; this is often done in an effort to disguise the reverting. This type of edit counts toward 3RR.
If you violate the three-revert rule, after your fourth revert in 24 hours, sysops may block you for up to 24 hours. In the cases where multiple parties violate the rule, administrators should treat all sides equally.
User:Isarig has reverted 5 times, as the following diff files show:
1. [20] 2. [21] 3. [22] 4. [23] 5. [24]
I will therefore block that user for 16 hours (which is less than the 24 hours.)
--CSTAR 19:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, but why are you posting this here? That's what his talk page is for. Armon 14:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Re: Why are you posting this here. To be absolutely clear that the rule is being applied fairly to all parties as per the statement In the cases where multiple parties violate the rule, administrators should treat all sides equally. Administrators are under no obligation to find all violations, so this gives other parties notification. --CSTAR 14:27, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
As your only edits have been to assist Lee in his edit war over the "cheerleading" phrase -which frankly, Isarig has a point about, posting it here strikes me as not so much as fair, but slightly triumphant. Armon 16:07, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Well Armon, just so that I may dispel your mistaken notion of my triumphalism, please check the block log of User:Commodore_Sloat and have a look at the talk page of the affected article. I did exactly the same thing on the talk page of that article.
Moreover, you give ample evidence of not acting in good faith. As I said before, get some experience editing other areas in WP and then come back and complain about trumphalism and fairness.--CSTAR 22:42, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
For example? I guess "bad faith" simply means I don't take your position on the article. And again, pontificating on my supposed "experience" is only going to make you seem "fair" to those on your side of the argument. This not about me but about you taking sides in an edit war, blocking your opponent, then posting the block note here. I'm not even disputing you blocking the guy, and I note you didn't go for the full 24 hours, but if you want the perception of "fairness" to match your self-assessment, you can either take my points as constructive criticism, or continue to be self-righteous about it and play the man instead. Armon 01:45, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Hmm. The way I read the rule, and the section which says "In the cases where multiple parties violate the rule, administrators should treat all sides equally. - this means all the editors in this edit war, and Lee had more than the alloted 3 reverts, yet for some reason you did not block him. "treating all sides equally" does not mean that if you blocked an editor, sometime in the past, in some different article, then that editor gets a free pass in this argument to make up for it. Isarig 23:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd have to look at the diffs to see if Isarig is right, but if true, then that, plus your defense of his incivility re: Elizmr, suggests Lee has a "guardian admin". Just think about it. Armon 01:45, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I believe bad faith assumptions such as the above are what CSTAR was referring to. Please assume good faith. Personal attacks and incivility are not going to help reach consensus or improve this article. bcasterline t 01:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
What? CSTAR's "Moreover, you give ample evidence of not acting in good faith" when I pointed out his specific actions which may be perceived as unfair? From WP:AGF, "Of course, there's a difference between assuming good faith and ignoring bad actions. If you expect people to assume good faith from you, make sure you demonstrate it. Don't put the burden on others. Yelling "Assume Good Faith" at people does not excuse you from explaining your actions, and making a habit of it will convince people that you're acting in bad faith."
Apart from that, you're right, this is a side issue -and it's one of the main reasons I don't think 3RR violations should be posted on article talk pages. Armon 03:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I was referring to your assumption that CSTAR was not acting impartially. If everyone would assume good faith -- that everyone else is as interested in improving the article to something comprehensive and unbiased, which I believe is true -- then the article would not be the casualty of an edit war by two opposing POV camps. bcasterline t 03:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Of course you were. I was just noting your scolding only seems to go in one direction and it was about specific concerns, rather than a vague charge of "ample evidence" of my "bad faith". Read the quote from the policy again, anyone, no matter how much we disagree, will get the same AofGF and civility they likewise extend to me. "Assumption" is the default position, it doesn't mean "blinkered". Armon 05:49, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
If anyone feels a block was made in error, take it to WP:AN/I. If you see someone violate 3RR, report it on WP:AN/3RR. CSTAR behaved completely appropriately so far as I can see. Cease uncivil remarks about other editors. KillerChihuahua?!? 02:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I am not claiming my block was made in error, but I am saying is that it was not done in a way that treated all sides eqaully. And the excuse CSTAR made for why this was "equal treatment (that he blocked csloat some time ago on a different article) is a misreading and misapplication of 3RR. Isarig 02:40, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually no, what I said was in response to Armon's accusing me of triumphalism in publicly announcing your block on this talk page. I said that I made a similar announcement on a talk page in the case of a block of csloat. Could that be any clearer? In addition. note that the fact of your 3RR violation was observed by another user on your talk page (that user said you made 6 violations in 2 hours) so suggestion of my acting as a guardian "admin" are totally unjustfified. I don't go around sniffing for 3RR violations, but if someone points them out in a timely way, I will apply a block as I did with Csloat. --CSTAR 06:06, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
So all you're saying is that you've been similarly "triumphant" in other cases, as well. This is the "old two wrongs make a right" fallacy. As you went to block me, I'm sure you did not fail to notice the other editor who as engaged in the edit war with me, matching my reverts tit-for-tat. Yet, you did not block him, and thus failed to apply 3RR in an equitable manner to bth sides. I expect more from an admin. Isarig 14:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit]
Recent edits
I'm doing some work to tighten up the article tonight.
* I took out the section on Yale, I agreed with CSTAR's comments above. * I moved some of the career remarks to the top and views below * I'm going to try to tighten up the zionist influence section, which it repetetive, and the translation sections, which are a bit long.
I hope that I didn't cut anyone's favorite sentence out. If I did, please forgive me. elizmr 00:39, 10 May 2006 (UTC) NOTE: I did not get to the second translation dispute, but I think it needs work for readability and clarity. I also didn't get to the zionist influence section. elizmr 01:05, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I've just rewritten the Iran speech translation dispute still long, but the nature of the argument is clarified at least. Armon 14:20, 10 May 2006 (UTC) [edit]
Yale position
I restored it -I don't know why it was deleted -please discuss. Armon
My comments (from above)
Do you think that the various controversy sections achieve this dispassionate objective? Take the appointment at Yale section. The article reports the fact that this appointment has been critized. Fine, this is a fact, no problem. However, do we need to also include quotes from the WSJ op/ed piece, a yale graduate and a couple of grad students about why they think this is a bad idea.--CSTAR 14:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I would be in favor of including some form of this section if no better reason than it is the reason why Cole has been most recently in the news. JoshuaZ 15:41, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
(edit confict)
Well yes and no, we need to say "why" it's controversial -but I accept it's raw and overlong. I've commented out the quotes out until we decide how to handle it. It's a major current event in the guy's career, and if he gets it or no, there'll be alot of talk about it, so we'll have to figure what to do.
Another point though -I honestly couldn't find your comment Elizmr referred to -maybe we should archive? Armon 15:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit]
WP:BLP
The article as it currently stands, with 2/3 of its content devoted to criticisms, violates WP:BLP#Libel_and_defamation. This article is now on the radar screens of a number of wikipedians who take WP:BLP quite seriously. I suggest the current editors here conform the article to WP:BLP#Libel_and_defamation to avoid outside intervention. FeloniousMonk 15:13, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Quick guys, straighten up -we're being watched! Armon 15:49, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
And edited, if this elaborate ediface of criticism isn't pared down to align with WP:BLP. FeloniousMonk 16:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Quite frankly, the Views section was inappropriately placed under Controversy. His views are his views, and should not be listed as controversy per se. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 16:15, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Thank goodness. I, for one, welcome outside intervention on this page to align with BLP. This page has essentially been hijacked by editors who want to make it into an attack piece on an academic. I've been trying to keep parts of the page sensible but it is a fulltime job, especially when improvements to the page get reverted.--csloat 17:50, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
This may be the worst Wiki article I have ever seen. If I were to remove every item I was certain was a vio of NPOV and BLP, there might be a very short intro left. Quite frankly, this page is a disgrace. All editors need to understand that no matter how detestable one holds the subject of the article to be, the subject deserves a fair article, not a friggin' hatchet job. •Jim62sch• 22:20, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
For the editors who have just come in to rush to Cole's "defense" -please read this talk page -and maybe the actual article, instead of just the contents list. The rationale for renaming the "criticism" and "views" into "controversy" was because the various "controversies" are presented as both critics' claims and Cole's rebuttals. This is coming off as knee-jerk, especially threats about it being "libel and defamation". Armon 02:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Please read the link to WP:BLP provided, and you will be less confused about "threats" (which have not been made) and the guideline (which is being violated on this article.) KillerChihuahua?!? 02:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I have to say that what is being interpreted as "criticism" here is in reality aiming to be a balanced discussion of Cole's views. I think we would all agree that Cole has many stances that are quite provocative. Some editors here have been attempting to raise these controversial view of Coles, as identified by his critics, and then show how he responds to these points with quotes from his writing. As a neutral source, Wikipedia could do a service that cannot be done in more biased ones and present a full three dimensioinal portrait of Cole. This process has been hampered, frankly, by the tendency of some editors to be so uncomfortable with having anything that could be seen as negative on this page that they revert, delete, etc instead of dispassionately digging to find out how Cole would respond and editing appropriately. This is a clear case of CENSORSHIP. This does not honor Wikipedia, and instead turns it into a propaganda organ. elizmr 02:28, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anyone argues that criticism of Cole shouldn't be presented. However, let's look at one example from an earlier version of the article: His views on the right of Israel to exist. The way that view was presented was exclusively from the viewpoint of a critic, Efraim Karsh. That's why I added three or four sentences (BTW also from a source which is generally critical of Cole) but which made it very clear that he did not question Israel's right to exist. It's fine (in my view) to then say that some critics consider this "lip service", but the way it was presented was utterly biased.
Your suggestion of censorhip really rings hollow.--CSTAR 02:47, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Not to me, it doesn't, and I suspect not to other editors here. Perhaps you are not guilty of the most serious abuses, but the wholesale deletions by KillerChihuahua certianly look that way Isarig 02:55, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
CSTAR, I think I have more than demonstrated that I am editing in good faith here. If I put something from a critic on the page, it can be completed by you bringing in something from Cole. I have repeatedly asked you guys to do this. I recently edited a page with Lee and Armon that mostly consisted almost exclusively of crits when I stumbled upon it and I worked to make the page better--not by deleting the crits or reverting or complaining on the talk page or to Wiki admins, but by finding out how the organization had responded and editing the page appropriately. I think it is a pretty good page now but it took a lot of work on all our parts to get it there. I think this page requires the same hard work, but it seems to be more expedient to use censorship to avoid the work altogether. I am really dissappointed. elizmr 02:58, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I would also point out that the MEMRI article is also still about 3/4 "Controversy". That, and the sudden influx of like-minded editors who now demand wholesale deletions, and sanitizing, the article, suggests to me that there's been some canvasing going on. Maybe real "right-wingers" (as opposed to anyone right of a relatively "far-left" position) buy encyclopedias, instead of editing them. Armon 03:20, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Canvassing? Well, I saw an article that was about as far away from what a Wikipedia biography should be, and I mentioned it to FM, KC, Jim and JZ. If you want to call that "canvasing", then I suppose I have to plead guilty. I suppose I could have posted my concern at wikien-L, where they have been discussing problems like this for the last week or so, or at ANI, since this at attack article raises real concerns for Wikipedia's credibility and libel concerns. If I had been looking for people to "sanitise" the article I would have gone out an recruited some actual left-leaning editors. But a slanted article is a problem whichever way it slants. This one slants heavily towards criticism. Since the structure of the article does not comply with what a Wikipedia article should be, it needs to be cleaned up. The final product should adhere to NPOV. This one doesn't. Guettarda 04:50, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit]
Views
What are Cole's views on Israel? We have no quotes from him, only his critics. Unless views are forthcoming (and properly cited) I will remove these sections. KillerChihuahua?!? 16:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
That's incorrect. We have his own quote on Israeli democracy as compared with baathist Syria. Isarig 16:55, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Some relevant blog posts: [25] [26]. These are responses to what he perceived to be character defamation, so one can see both sides of the story. He's certainly opposed to the Likud party and other Israeli rightwingers. bcasterline t 16:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
He's opposed to all Israeli parties, except (presumably) the extreme far left. Just yesterday he was ranting about Nobel Laurate Peres, who is neither Likud nor "righwing". Isarig 16:55, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
90% of his blog is about Iraq, Iran, and terrorism, not about Israel. He has only expressed opposition to what he identifies as Likud policies. He was not "ranting" about Peres; he was discussing Peres' threats against Iran, and Cole was again reasserting his belief that the translation of the Iranian president's speech is incorrect. Cole clarified his position on this again today: "Ahmadinejad views Israel the way President Gerald Ford viewed the Soviet Union. He wishes it would vanish as a regime, but he is not prepared to launch a military attack to accomplish that goal. Since Iran sits in the United Nations with Israel, Ahmadinejad is in contravention of the UN charter in rejecting Israel's legitimacy. But wishing a regime would fall is not the same thing as militarily attacking it." Isarig and Armon and Elizmr, three editors here, seem to wish to make this page all about Cole's views on Israel even though they form only a small part of his commentary on the blog (and almost none of his published work).--csloat 17:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
What part of Add his views or this section goes did everyone miss? Add them to the article, with cites. KillerChihuahua?!? 16:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Slightly echoing, if you have a citation for the Peres thing stick it in. JoshuaZ 17:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
The posts linked to above actually detail his support for Israel, even Likud's Netenyahu. The latter one is certainly anti-Likud, but not anti-Israeli by any stretch. I get the impression of a nuanced view, rather than the black-and-white view that seems to be the norm. Not an impression you would get from this article. Guettarda 17:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I hope [ this] isn't what you mean when you say "ranting about Nobel Laurate Peres":
Shimon Peres says he wants to remind Iran that it, too, can be wiped off the face of the earth, implying that Israel is capable of obliterating it with its nuclear arsenal. Peres also had the gall to blame Iran for provoking a nuclear arms race in the area!
Cole links to an Israeli Defense Ministry official criticising Peres' statement. Is the Israeli Defense Ministry also opposed to "all Israeli parties"? As for "Peres also had the gall to blame Iran for provoking a nuclear arms race in the area" - it isn't like Iran was the first state in the Middle East to seek nukes, and it isn't like Peres had no influence in Israeli government. Isarig definitely is mischaracterising what Cole had to say. Guettarda 17:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
The question is not whether or not Cole was right to criticize Peres. At WP, we do not determine who is right and who is wrong - we report things as they were said. And this rant shows that in addition to opposing Likud policies, he opposes Kadima policies, and that in addition to blaming Sharon and Netanyahu (Likud) he also does not like Peres (Kadima, ex-Labour). The fact that this criticism of Peres may be shared by others is wholly irrelevant to the issue of Cole's view of Isareli politics. Isarig 23:57, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the views on Isreal sections; they gave none of Cole's views. KillerChihuahua?!? 20:33, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I had just responded to you that you are incorrect, and that we have his own quote on Israeli democracy as compared with baathist Syria. Why did you ignore this and engage in wholesale deletion? Isarig 23:36, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I removed the On Israel section[27] - there was content from Efraim Karsh, Steven Plaut, and yes the one Baathist/Israeli quote. Surely we can do better than that? If we are to have a section titled "Human rights and Democracy in Israel vs. Arab Countries" more than one comparison is required. If we are to use only the one quote, the title is overblown. Which direction would best inform a reader? Is the Israeli bit misleading, is he not better known for his positions on Iraq, Iran, and terrorism? Surely that is more appropriate? I can find quotes from some famous people speaking about their thoughts on all kinds of things, but it would be misleading to post them prominently in their articles. KillerChihuahua?!? 23:55, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
If you don't think the Karsh and Plaut comments belong in the Views section (and I tend to agree) - move them to the criticism section. Don't delete the entire section, especially not after it had been pointed out to you that the section includes Cole's quotes, verbatim. If you want to change the Views section to be more representative of what he is known for - Iraq, Iran - by all means add to those sections or create them - but don't remove existign sourced material Isarig 00:00, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Merely because something is sourced does not make it relevant. KillerChihuahua?!? 00:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Cole's anti-Israel bias is relevant to his critics -it's not your call. Armon 00:30, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Is it relevant to his most prominent critics? How relevant? Why? On what is this assertion based? KillerChihuahua?!? 00:57, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Of course it is. Among Cole's prominent crtics are Plaut, Karsh et al, whose criticism is focused on his anti-israeli bias. This assertion is based on their quoted material, which you decided to remove. Isarig 01:23, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I would like to request again that Cole supporters here please dig for cole's responses to criticism and put them on the page. It is ridiculous and dishonest to remove this criticism (especially from someone like Karsh who is a full professor in a relevant field) and demand that other editors supply Cole's views. If you are upset, KillerChihuahua, that Cole's responses to these views are not in the article, then why don't you add them? Frankly, I am not seeing many of the editors here working to improve the article as hard as they are working to compain about it.
This is a very disappointing development for Wikipedia. elizmr 02:36, 11 May 2006 (UTC) [edit]
Stop edit warring.
Please stop edit warring, if the edit warring continues, I may protect the page. JoshuaZ 16:51, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Feel free to. In fact, I'm off to request it. •Jim62sch• 22:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
The link...28 •Jim62sch• 22:26, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit]
Ahmadinejad
Why the war over the inclusion of Cole's reply, etc? What's the rationale for removal (can't find in on this page, apologies if I missed it). Guettarda 16:53, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Concur and have restored. KillerChihuahua?!? 17:07, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
A few issues, 1) the section (even the version I rewrote) is long in the first place. 2)the blow-by-blow obscures what the argument was about. Cole's second "reply" (it wasn't specifically to Hitchens) unsurprisingly, is the position as his first to Hitchens, so I took a longer quote the the first blog post. So it's redundant. 3) The claim that Hitchens "took the same position as Cole two months earlier" -is a selective misquote, and OT anyway. 4)The MEMRI translation was a "bob each way" -they similarly translated the phrase, but the speech was interpreted as a clear threat to Israel. Bill Scher is the one who claimed MEMRI supported Cole, and is yet another side issue as well as misleading. 4)It's not possible to every single point of a blog-war in, so I looked for what each guy's key point was, and quoted it. Armon 17:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
You are just making specious assertions without evidence. You seem to be simply trying to tilt the argument in Hitchens' favor. The Hitchens quote from two months ago is not "selective" and it is clearly cited by Cole in the context of this argument, so it is not OT. The MEMRI is not "bob each way" -- there is no ev idence of how they interpreted the speech as a military threat, and I see nothing misleading -- it is almost verbatim the same as Cole's. Again, you are misinterpreting Cole's translation, which says that "wiped off the map" is incorrect and should be rendered "erased from the pages of history" or some such. I made these points above and you did not reply to them.--csloat 17:42, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
No, you're misinterpreting what the argument is about. Cole and Scher focus on what they see as the key phrase, Hitchens and Sullivan focus on what they see as the intent of the speech. Armon 00:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Again, you are making assertions without any evidence or discussion.--csloat 05:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I can't give any more "evidence" than the article, and 3 blog posts in question. So let's break it down.
Step 1 (of 4) Hitchens called Cole an "apologist" -why? Armon 07:01, 11 May 2006 (UTC
[edit] Cole
JUAN COLE'S BAD BLOG. Dear Diary by Efraim Karsh Post date 04.19.05 | Issue date 04.25.05 Print this article. Printer friendly Email this article. E-mail this article
Before September 11, 2001, Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan, enjoyed anonymity outside his professional circle. He was a leading figure in the Middle East Studies Association of North America (mesa), editing for five years its flagship publication, The International Journal of Middle East Studies. (In 2004, he was elected the Association's incoming president.) But his research on certain esoteric aspects of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Middle East (e.g., the genesis of the Baha'i faith) was unlikely to bring him attention in the field and offered little hope of public acclaim. Then came September 11. When mesa came under intense criticism after the terrorist attacks for having failed to educate generations of students in the realities of the Middle East, Cole was livid. Finding it difficult to place opinion pieces in the mainstream press that could present reality as he saw it, he had the prescience to realize the immense opportunities that an online diary offered.
Cole started his blog, which he called Informed Comment and subtitled Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion, in April 2002. It quickly established itself as a popular source of information on the Middle East, attracting a reported 200,000 page-views per month. Informed Comment also caught the eye of journalists, earning Cole dozens of mentions in the country's top dailies and newsweeklies, an hour-long appearance on NPR's "Fresh Air," and 14 appearances on the "NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer. The Village Voice advised its readers, "If you're not already visiting Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog (juancole.com) on a daily basis, now's the time to get in the habit," while L.A. Weekly called Cole's blog "a must-read for anyone seriously interested in Iraq." In 2003, Informed Comment won the 2003 Koufax Award for best expert blog, and, last year, Cole was even asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the fissures within Iraqi society and his ideas for creating a stable Iraqi government.
The appeal of Cole's blog is easy to see. It is highly readable, stripped of the jargon common to other Middle East academic researchers. And Cole provides a wealth of information on the Sisyphean U.S. effort to reconstruct Iraq (a country that Cole himself has never visited) and the violent opposition to this endeavor, at times from Arabic newspapers not normally available to Western readers (Cole, unlike many journalists--and even some Middle East experts--reads Arabic). What's more, Cole has called himself "an outspoken hawk in the war on terror," and his views on the invasion of Afghanistan and the Iraq war, both of which he supported (while also voicing concerns about U.S. unilateralism), seem to bolster his credibility, reassuring readers that he doesn't suffer from the knee-jerk anti-Americanism found in many Middle East studies departments.
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But, unfortunately, Cole suffers from many other common Arabist misconceptions that deeply prejudice and compromise his writing. Having done hardly any independent research on the twentieth-century Middle East, Cole's analysis of this era is essentially derivative, echoing the conventional wisdom among Arabists and Orientalists regarding Islamic and Arab history, the creation of the modern Middle East in the wake of World War I, and its relations with the outside world. Worse, Cole's discussion of U.S. foreign policy frequently veers toward conspiratorial anti-Semitism. This is hardly the "informed" commentary Cole claims it to be.
Among the Arabist orthodoxies to which Cole subscribes is the view that external powers are responsible for the Middle East's endemic malaise. The West is blamed for (allegedly) carving the defunct Ottoman Empire into artificial entities, in accordance with its imperial interests and with complete disregard for the yearning of the indigenous peoples for political unity. Many of the problems of contemporary Arab societies are also ascribed to the legacy of Western colonialism. For instance, in an article titled "why we can blame 20th century imperialism for many of our 21st century problems," Cole identified "the dead hand of Western European colonialism" behind some of the Middle East's major conflicts. "Imperialism depended on dominating, humiliating and exploiting others, and on drawing artificial boundaries for European strategic purposes," he argues, adding elsewhere that "the Middle East suffers from having small countries imposed by Western colonialism." These standard assertions not only ignore the active role played by local leaders in the reshaping of their region after World War I, they also overlook the fact that many Middle Eastern countries (Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, to mention but a few) are substantially larger than the country that is often held culpable for their ills: Great Britain.
There has been no real discussion of the veracity of this blame-the-West hypothesis since it was spelled out in the mid-'30s, and the handful of scholars who dared to broach the subject were viciously attacked and marginalized. The eminent British historian Elie Kedourie was even denied a doctorate at Oxford University for having refused to revise his dissertation to conform with this dogma. When Kedourie later led the assault on the blame-the-West thesis, the denizens of Middle East studies shunned him.
Yet it is the inculcation of this misguided dogma in generations of students that prevented the anticipation of the September 11 attacks and has subsequently held back a correct prognosis of their root causes. Blaming the victim for its misfortune, most Arabists portray September 11 as a response to an arrogant and self-serving U.S. foreign policy by a fringe extremist group whose violent interpretation of Islam has little to do with the actual spirit and teachings of this religion. Ignoring centuries of Islamic jihads against those deemed infidels and the deeply illiberal elements of Islam, Cole claims, "Radical Islamism was first provoked to terrorism in Egypt precisely by the arrogance of British power there, beginning a genealogy of violence that leads through Ayman al-Zawahiri directly to September 11, 2001." Were U.S. policy to become more attuned to Muslim sensibilities, Cole and his fellow Arabists imply, Islamic militants would be discredited and the ticking bomb, so to speak, would be defused.
Like many of those who inhabit Middle East studies departments, Cole believes that the U.S. policy that most inflames Muslims is support for Israel. He writes that "knee-jerk US support for Israeli expansionism is at the root of anti-Americanism in the Arab world." While Cole pays the customary lip service on his blog to Israel's right to exist within its pre-1967 borders (and says it would be worth American lives to defend Tel Aviv), he also makes clear that he thinks the Middle East would have been better off without the Jewish state. Discounting altogether the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine, so as to misrepresent Israel's creation as an ordinary colonialist project, he claims in one post that it would have been preferable for the British to have simply accepted Jewish refugees "rather than saddling a small, poor peasant country with 500,000 immigrants hungry to make the place their own." He goes on to perversely blame Israel for Arab militarism, contending that "the rise of Israel put pressure on Arab budgets, when a different sort of neighbour might have allowed them to invest the money in more fruitful areas than the military."
Cole glibly claims, "[T]o any extent that contemporary Muslims have a problem with Jews, it is largely driven by what they see as injustices done by Zionists to the Palestinians." Such ahistorical analysis ignores a deep anti-Jewish bigotry that dates to Islam's earliest days and reflects the prophet Muhammad's outrage over the rejection of his religious message by the contemporary Jewish community. To his credit, Cole criticized the Egyptian government's 2002 decision to air a TV serial based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a virulent anti-Semitic tract fabricated by the Russian secret police at the turn of the twentieth century that alleges an organized Jewish conspiracy to achieve world domination. But the line of argument he uses repeats the same ahistorical belief that the Protocols are a recent alien import to Arab societies that "had no particular resonances in the Muslim world (outside a few radical Muslim cliques) until the past couple of decades."
Cole should know better than that. The Protocols have been a staple of Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism since the early twentieth century, published in numerous editions and in several different translations, including one by the brother of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. (Nasser himself would recommend the pamphlet as a useful guide to the "Jewish mind," as would his successor, Anwar Sadat, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, Muammar Qaddafi of Libya, and Yasir Arafat, among many others.) Less than a year after their airing on Egyptian television, the Protocols were saliently displayed alongside a Torah scroll in an exhibition at the newly built Alexandria library.
Nor are the Protocols the only popular anti-Semitic import in the Muslim-Arab world. The "blood libel"--the medieval Christian fabrication that claimed Jews use gentile blood, and particularly the blood of children, for ritual purposes--was imported to the Ottoman Empire as early as the fifteenth century (and not hundreds of years later, as Cole asserts), and it was quickly internalized in the Muslim imagination, where it remains firmly implanted to this day. The libel surfaced numerous times during the pre-Zionist nineteenth century across the Muslim World, from Aleppo to Damascus to Antioch. As late as October 2000, the largest Egyptian government daily, Al Ahram, which is probably the world's foremost Arabic-language newspaper, published an almost full-page article titled "jewish matzah is made of arab blood."
Cole may express offense at the Protocols, but their obsession with the supposed international influence of "world Zionism" resonates powerfully in his own writings. How else can one describe his depiction of U.S. foreign policy as controlled by a ruthless Zionist cabal implanted at the highest echelons of the Bush administration and employing "sneaky methods of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of intelligence" to promote its goals? And what of Cole's claim that the pro-Israel lobby aipac, in alliance with the Christian Right, represents a sinister force controlling congressional decisions on policy toward Israel? "The Founding Fathers of the United States deeply feared that a foreign government might gain this level of control over a branch of the United States government, and their fears have been vindicated," Cole laments.
The chairman and CEO of this imaginary Zionist cabal is Israeli premier and Likud leader Ariel Sharon, whom Cole despises--so much so that he cannot bring himself to refer to Sharon without resorting to the vilest invectives. He is the butcher of Beirut, a mafia don, war criminal, land grabber, starver of children, and so on. "Couldn't he shut his enormous pie hole[?]" Cole wonders of Sharon. "Apparently [Bush] has fallen for a line from the neo-cons in his administration that they can deliver the Jewish vote to him in 2004 if only he kisses Sharon's ass," he writes in another post. And all this comes from a historian priding himself on his dispassionate and evenhanded approach.
Cole is of course not the first nor the last to argue that U.S. foreign policy has been hijacked by the Jewish state (one recalls Pat Buchanan's description of Congress as Israel's "amen corner"). But, while most anti-Israel (indeed, anti-Jewish) critics tend to hide behind the more neutral term "neocons," Cole does not shy from labeling prominent Jewish members of the Bush administration (or, for that matter, anyone not overtly hateful of Sharon) as "Likudniks."
Conscious of the racist overtones of his criticism, Cole attempts to present it as purely businesslike. "Some have attempted to argue that the very term `Neoconservative' is a code word for derogatory attitudes toward Jews," he writes. "This argument is mere special pleading and a playing of the race card, however, insofar as only a tiny percentage of American Jews are Neoconservatives, and only a tiny percentage of Neoconservatives are Jews." True enough. But then why the substitution of the term Likudniks for neocons? And why is it that the Likudniks who most obsess Cole all have names like Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Adelman, Ledeen, Gaffney, Wurmser, Pipes, Rubin, or Kristol?
How are the American Likudniks going to use their overwhelming prowess? To embroil the United States in "serial wars with Iraq, Iran, Syria, N. Korea, and apparently ultimately China." "The war in Iraq is scary for many reasons," Cole wrote on March 6, 2003. "But what is really scary is that many of the hawks in the Bush administration say, `after Baghdad, Beijing.'"
In pursuing these outlandish ideas, the Washington Likudniks are following in the footsteps of their warlike spiritual mentor and political ally, Sharon, whose 1982 invasion of Lebanon Cole sees echoed in the Iraq war. "Sharon just wanted to reshape Lebanese politics, the way his disciples in the Bush administration now want to reshape Iraqi politics," he wrote shortly before the outbreak of hostilities. "We'll see if the American Likudniks have more luck than Sharon himself did." But, whether or not Iraq's politics will be successfully reshaped, the real goal of "Wolfowitz's adventure in Iraq" is "to defang Iraq as a favor to Ariel Sharon."
Cole provides no proof whatsoever for this conspiratorial thinking--there is none. During Saddam's 25 years in power, Iraq killed not a single Israeli. Nor has a single American soldier ever been sent to fight on Israel's behalf. It is therefore complete nonsense to suggest that the United States would go to war to defend Israel, rather than its own national security.
But, in Cole's fertile imagination, there are no limits to Sharon's domination of the White House. "[I]f Sharon and aipac decide that they need the US government to take military action against Iran," he ominously prophesied, "it is likely that the US government will do so." On another occasion, he speculated that the neocons had manipulated American forces in Iraq to try to capture the militant Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr "because he had objected so loudly to Sharon's murder of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the clerical leader of the Hamas Party." If you believe this, you'll believe anything. But perhaps that's what Cole has been banking on all along.
Efraim Karsh is the head of the Mediterranean Studies Programme at King's College, University of London.
[edit] Extra-academic career: "Informed Comment" blog and punditry
From 2002 onwards, Cole has became increasingly active as a pundit in UK and US media on topics related to the Middle East. His focus has primarily been Iraq, Iran and Israel. In 2002, Cole started a blog entitled: Informed Comment covering "History, Middle East, South Asia, Religious Studies, and the War on Terror". The blog has won various awards as of April 2006 the most prominent being the 2005 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism from Hunter College. [1] It has also received two 2004 Koufax Awards: the "Best Expert Blog" and the "Best Blog Post". [2]Cole has published political writings in The Guardian, the San Jose Mercury News, Salon.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Review, The Nation, Tikkun, and others. [3] In 2004, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations requested Cole's testimony at hearings to better understand the situation in Iraq. [4]
[edit] Controversy
[edit] Subjects of Punditry vs. areas of academic expertise
Professor and Head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London Efraim Karsh Efraim Karsh, who published extensively on modern Middle Eastern affairs, has challenged Cole's expertise on subjects he addresses in his blog: "Having done hardly any independent research on the twentieth-century Middle East, Cole's analysis of this era is essentially derivative, echoing the conventional wisdom among Arabists and Orientalists regarding Islamic and Arab history, the creation of the modern Middle East in the wake of World War I, and its relations with the outside world." [5]. John Fund, in the Wall Street Journal wrote that: "[Cole's] scholarship is largely on the 19th-century Middle East, not on contemporary issues. [6]
On his blog, Cole has attacked critics for commenting on Iraq when they do not know Arabic or have familiarity with Iraqi culture [7], however it has been noted that despite his failure to know Hebrew or to have any background in Israeli studies, he makes Israeli politics a major focus of his blog commentary"[8].
[edit] Intellectual standards and integrity
On the occassion of Juan Cole's assumption of the presidency of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, Archaeologist, Historian, and Campus Watch Director Alexander H. Joffe wrote an article entitled "Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies" in the Middle East Quarterly[9]. Joffe introduces the article by stating that Cole's election, "marks an endorsement of his work by hundreds of professors in various fields of Middle Eastern studies in American universities," and in the article criticizes Cole as symptomatic of a "widespread urge" among Middle Eastern Studies scholars "to promote polemic over scholarship." Other critics have echoed these concerns [10] [11] [12]
Joffe also raised issues of Cole's intellectual integrity, pointing to an instances in which Cole altered his blog posts after they were demonstrated to contain incorrect historical information. [13] cited in [14].
Cole has also been criticized by Jonah Goldberg [15] and others [16] for failing to acknowledge his own past positions on the war in Iraq and elections in Iraq and Iran. In response, Cole has defended those positions on his weblog. He specifically responded to Goldberg as follows:
"I think it is time to be frank about some things. Jonah Goldberg knows absolutely nothing about Iraq. I wonder if he has even ever read a single book on Iraq, much less written one. He knows no Arabic. He has never lived in an Arab country. He can't read Iraqi newspapers or those of Iraq's neighbors. He knows nothing whatsoever about Shiite Islam, the branch of the religion to which a majority of Iraqis adheres. Why should we pretend that Jonah Goldberg's opinion on the significance and nature of the elections in Iraq last Sunday matters? It does not." [17]
Goldberg criticized Cole's reliance on ad hominem arguments [18]
[edit] On Human rights in Israel vs. the Arab world
Economist Steven Plaut, on the Right-wing Web site FrontPageMag.com, mentions Cole's collaboration with Justin Raimondo, and charges that Cole "harps constantly on supposed human rights abuses by Israel – which is a way to demonize and delegitimize Israel, a country under threat of annihilation from the Arab dictatorships Cole supports - while ignoring human rights in other countries is acting in behalf of malevolent political agendas." [19] Dr. Alexander H. Joffee presents and discusses Cole's comments on human rights and democracy in Israel as part of a longer article [20].
[edit] Charges of use of anti-semitic conspiracy theory
Professor Efraim Karsh writes that "Cole's discussion of U.S. foreign policy frequently veers toward conspiratorial anti-Semitism." [5]. Steven Plaut writes that Cole "believes that a group of Jewish 'neo-conservatives' largely runs U.S. policy toward the Middle East. His recurrent theory is that a nebulous 'pro-Likud' cabal controls the U.S. government from a small number of key positions in the Executive Branch" [21]. Many other critics have also discussed Cole's reliance on anti-semetic conspiracy theory in his extra-academic writings [22] [23] [24] [25].
In a response to charges of antisemitism, Cole has asserted that his US neoconservatives and Israeli Likudnik critics have used claims of "antisemitism" against him not because they believe he is antisemetic, but rather as a tool of intimidation due to his political views: "So this is the way it goes with the Likudniks. First they harass you and try to have you spied on. Then they threaten, bully and try to intimidate you. And if that fails and you show some spine, then they simply lie about you. (In this case the lies are produced by quoting half a passage, or denuding it of its context, or adopting a tone of pained indignation when quoting a perfectly obvious observation)... The thing that most pains me in all this is the use of the word "antisemite." Pipes already had to settle one lawsuit, by Douglas Card, for throwing the word around about him irresponsibly." Cole believes that "...among the real targets of Pipes and Co. is liberal and leftist Jews." Furthermore, Cole accuses his critics of "...encouraging a new kind of antisemitism, which sees it as unacceptable that Jews should be liberals or should criticize Likud Party policies." [26]
[edit] Legal threats and responses to legal threats
Cole threatened legal action against Daniel Pipes and historian Martin Kramer, after Campus Watch (an organization which Pipes runs and which Kramer is associated with through its parent organization also run by Pipes [27]) published a Juan Cole "dossier" on the Campus Watch website. A screenshot of the "dossier", can be seen online [28]. Cole asserted that the dossier incorrectly portrayed him as a supporter of Islamic extremism, exposed him to acts of violence, and that it therefore constituted "stalking".
Cole was threatened with legal action by Yigal Carmon of the Middle East Media Research Institute for making "false statements" about MEMRI on his Blog. Cole had characterized MEMRI as "a sophisticated anti-Arab propaganda machine [that is a] public relations campaign essentially on behalf of the far right-wing Likud Party in Israel". After outlining Carmon's past history as an Israeli army officer and ties of MEMRI founder Meyrav Wurmsur's husband to the Likud party in Israel and Vice-President Richard Cheney's office, Cole went on to suggest that, "MEMRI is funded to the tune of $60 million a year by someone."[29]. In a personal letter to Cole, Carmon objected to Cole's statements, saying that they went, "beyond what could be considered legitimate criticism, and...qualify as slander and libel" Carmon also objected to Cole's, "trying to paint MEMRI in a conspiratorial manner by portraying us as a rich, sinister group.
Cole posted Carmon's letter on his Blog, along with a suggestion that Carmon was threatening to sue not because he found Cole's remarks libelous, but out of an attempt to silence him using a Strategic lawsuit against public participation. He encouraged his readers to write to MEMRI in protest, saying, "Israeli military intelligence is used to being able to censor the Israeli press and to intimidate journalists, and it is a bit shocking that Carmon should imagine that such intimidation would work in a free society. [30]"
Kramer made clear his distaste for Carmon's legal threat, but claimed that, "...the sad truth is that Cole himself was the first to hurl the threat of a frivolous lawsuit against a website—and with far less justification." [31]
[edit] Disputed Translations
In October 2004, Cole disputed MEMRI's translation[32] of the 2004 Osama bin Laden video released days before the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election. The video showed Osama saying: "...your security is not in the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaeda. No. Your security is in your own hands. And every state [wilayah] that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security." MEMRI used the modern standard Arabic definition of "wilayah" as "province or administrative district" to translate "wilayah" as "U.S. state" and suggested that bin Laden was attempting to speak to voters in individual states to influence their choice of candidate. However, Cole claimed that "while [MEMRI] are right to draw attention to the oddness of the diction, their conclusion is impossible." Cole suggested that bin Laden was not using the standard Arabic sense of "wilayah", as in the Arabic name of the United States of America, (الولايات الأمريكية المتح) but rather, either an archaic or a fundamentalists' sense of the word meaning "government", or that he might have lapsed into a local idiom in which "wilayah" might mean "city".[33] Cole points out, "Bin Laden says that such a "state" should not trifle with Muslims' security. He cannot possibly mean that he thinks Rhode Island is in a position to do so. Nor can he be referring to which way a state votes, since he begins by saying that the security of Americans is not in the hands of Bush or Kerry. He has already dismissed them as equivalent and irrelevant, in and of themselves." Yigal Carmon's article asserting the MEMRI translation of the word can be found in this article in the National Review Online. [34] The MEMRI translation contains a note: "The Islamist website Al-Qal'a explained what this sentence meant: "This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately."[35] Al-Jazeera translated the expression in question as "every state".[36] There is no indication that the weblog Carmon quoted had any affiliation with al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden. Asad Abu Khalil denounced the weblog -- "some anonymous writer on some anonymous website belonging to some anonymous group from an anonymous country" -- quoted by Carmon as "kooky" and noted that the quote in the MEMRI translation was taken out of context.[8][9]
Christopher Hitchens, referring to Cole as "a minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community", pilloried Cole for his comments on a private discussion list that suggested that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statements on Israel had been mistranslated. Conceding that Ahmadinejad's phrase, "wipe Israel off the map", as was done by the Associated Press and Nazila Fathi of the New York Times' Tehran bureau, may have been "...slightly too free a translation", Hitchens argued that it nonetheless clearly meant "annihilate", and ended with; "One might have thought that, if the map-wiping charge were to have been inaccurate or unfair, Ahmadinejad would have denied it. But he presumably knew what he had said and had meant to say. In any case, he has an apologist to do what he does not choose to do for himself. But this apologist, who affects such expertise in Persian, cannot decipher the plain meaning of a celebrated statement and is, furthermore, in need of a remedial course in English." [37]
Pointing out that the translation Hitchens found fault with was an early draft, taken from a private discussion group formed to develop ideas and discuss difficult translations with other academics and journalists, Cole defended his interpretation. Cole wrote, "Ahmadinejad did not say that 'Israel must be wiped off the map' with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time. It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem." Cole quoted the full context of the original email that Hitchens had cited, including the translation of the disputed passage: "The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)." He also demanded an apology from Hitchens for making public his message, in breech of the group's "no forwarding rule." He also referred to Hitchens' piece as being either ghost written by a right-wing think-tank, or the product of Hitchens' "...very serious and debilitating drinking problem." Cole also pointed out that he was not an "apologist" for Ahmadinejad, whom he called a "little shit" and of whom he had written in the original email: "I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies." [38]
Andrew Sullivan, a friend of Hitchens', dissected Hitchens', Cole's, and a third-party translation of Ahmadinejad's speech, and concluded, "Cole's rhetorical sleight of hand strikes me as deliberate deception, an attempt to deny the existence of a real genocidal evil in the world that Cole himself knows exists. Why? You decide. But Cole has exposed himself more brutally than Hitch ever could." [39]
[edit] Yale Position
Cole currently has been shortlisted for a professorship of contemporary Middle East studies at Yale University. This has attracted controversy.
John Fund, in the Wall Street Journal wrote that: "Mr. Cole's appointment would be problematic on several fronts. First, his scholarship is largely on the 19th-century Middle East, not on contemporary issues. "He has since abandoned scholarship in favor of blog commentary," says Michael Rubin, a Yale graduate and editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Mr. Cole's postings at his blog, Informed Comment, appear to be a far cry from scholarship. They feature highly polemical writing and dubious conspiracy theories." [40]
Michael Rubin, a Yale graduate who is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of the Middle East Quarterly, disagrees with Cole's appointment in the The Yale Daily News stating: "Universities thrive on scholarly discourse. Professors should be open to new ideas -- not only those that challenge policymakers, but also those that test entrenched campus opinion. Unfortunately, Cole has displayed a cavalier attitude toward those who disagree with him. In a February interview with Detroit's Metro Times, he argued that the U.S. government should shut down Fox News. "In the 1960s, the FCC would have closed it down," he argued. "It's an index of how corrupt our governmental institutions have become that the FCC lets this go on." Many Yalies may not like Fox, but top-down censorship is no solution." [41]
Eliana Johnson, a senior at Yale, and Mitch Webber, a Yale graduate at Harvard Law School, wrote in the New York Sun that, "The prospect of Mr. Cole joining the Yale faculty is disturbing for many reasons. His "scholarship" in this area consists entirely of crude polemics, and his outlook is colored by a conspiratorial view of history. Mr. Cole has used his modicum of fame not to participate in the realm of respectable scholarly debate but to express his deep and abiding hatred of Israel and to opine about the influence of a Zionist cabal on American foreign policy" [42]
[edit] Selected bibliography
- Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi`ite Islam (I.B. Tauris, 2002) ISBN 1860647367
- Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Bahá'í Faith in the Nineteenth Century Middle East (Columbia University Press, 1998) ISBN 0231110812
- Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's `Urabi Movement (Princeton University Press, 1993) ISBN 0691056838
[edit] External links
- Juan R. I. Cole Home Page at the University of Michigan
- Informed Comment - Juan Cole's weblog
[edit] Cole and other pundits
- Iraq as the 51st State - Asia Times interview with Cole, June 18, 2004
- Articles by Cole at Salon.com
- Juan Cole's Bad blog, by Efraim Karsh in the The New Republic
- Juan Cole Has Made His Intellectual Insecurity Clear, by Jonah Goldberg in the National Review
- Sullivan on Iraq War, Sept. 1, 2002 by Cole
- Andrew Sullivan responds in Contra Cole
- Manipulation of the Blogging World on Iraq? by Cole
- Ali of the blog Iraq The Model responds with Answers and Clarifications
- Cole responds to Ali
- Ali of the blog Iraq The Model responds with Answers and Clarifications
- Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies an extensive critique by Alexander H. Joffe of Middle East Forum. Andrew Sullivan, who coined the term "Fisking", described Joffe's piece as a "classic of the genre." [10]
[edit] References
- ^ Lifetime Awards for Molly Ivins, Anthony Lewis, Editor and Publisher, March 27, 2006
- ^ 2005 Koufax Awards, Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly blog, February 23, 2005.
- ^ Essays and Op-Eds, Juan Cole's Website
- ^ Juan Cole's Senate Testimony Brief, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 20, 2004
- ^ a b Juan Cole's Bad blog, by Efraim Karsh in the The New Republic
- ^ Cole Fire, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 24, 2006
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies
- ^ Cole Fire, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 24, 2006
- ^ Cole is poor choice for Mideast position, Michael Rubin, Yale Daily News, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
- ^ Yale's Next Tenured Radical?, Eliana Johnson and Mitch Webber, The New York Sun, April 18, 2006
- ^ [3]
- ^ Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies
- ^ Cole v. Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg, National Review, February 07, 2005
- ^ [4]
- ^ [5]
- ^ Cole v. Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg, National Review, February 07, 2005
- ^ Juan of a Kind by Steven Plaut (FrontPageMagazine) March 29, 2005
- ^ Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies
- ^ Old Juan Cole: A Very Sad Soul by Steven Plaut (FrontPageMagazine) March 23, 2005
- ^ Juan Cole, Media - and MESA - Darling by Jonathan Calt Harris (FrontPageMagazine) December 7, 2004
- ^ Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies Alexander H. Joffe, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2006 13(1)
- ^ [6]
- ^ Yale's Next Tenured Radical? Eliana Johnson and Mitch Webber, The New York Sun, April 18, 2006
- ^ Juan Cole, "Character Assassination", Informed Comment, December 8, 2004
- ^ [7], Martin Kramer, Sandstorm blog, September 18, 2002
- ^ Dossiers: COLE, Juan, Screenshot on ei: The Electronic Intifada
- ^ Bin Laden's Audio: Threat to States? at Juan Cole's blog. November 02, 2004
- ^ Intimidation by Israeli-Linked Organization Aimed at US Academic. November 23, 2004
- ^ Juan Cole Jogs My MEMRI at "Martin Kramer's Sandstorm" blog
- ^ Osama Bin Laden Tape Threatens U.S. States by Yigal Carmon. November 1, 2004
- ^ Bin Laden's Audio: Threat to States? at Juan Cole's blog. November 02, 2004
- ^ Osama vs. Bush. Bin Laden tape threatens U.S. States not to vote for Bush at National Review Online. October 31, 2004
- ^ Osama Bin Laden Tape Threatens U.S. States by Yigal Carmon. November 1, 2004
- ^ Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech at Al-Jazeera. 01 November 2004
- ^ The Cole Report, Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Tuesday, May 2, 2006
- ^ Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War! Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, May 03, 2006
- ^ Hitch vs Cole, Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish blog, May 3, 2006
- ^ Cole Fire, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 24, 2006
- ^ Cole is poor choice for Mideast position, Michael Rubin, Yale Daily News, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
- ^ Yale's Next Tenured Radical?, Eliana Johnson and Mitch Webber, The New York Sun, April 18, 2006
Cole, Juan Cole, Juan Cole, Juan Cole, Juan Cole, Juan 28 Christopher Hitchens, Slate, May 2, 2006
February 04, 2005, 12:37 p.m. Hard Times... ...and ever-moving goalposts.
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200502041237.asp
Consider Juan Cole. You probably haven't heard of him, but he's the dashboard saint of lefty Middle East experts. President-elect of the Middle East Studies Association, Cole has made a new career for himself in finding the dark lining of every silver cloud. After the Iraqi elections he harrumphed on his Web site that he was "appalled" by the media's cheerleading of the election. He absurdly declared that the 1997 Iranian elections were much more democratic (Iranian candidates had to be approved by the mullahs). He whined that Bush did not originally intend to have elections of this sort and only agreed when Ayatollah Sistani insisted. Suddenly, Bush the rigid ideologue is too flexible. Most telling, Cole offered a world-weary sigh that "This thing was more like a referendum than an election."
February 07, 2005, 9:43 a.m. Cole v. Goldberg Juan Cole has made his intellectual insecurity clear.
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200502070943.asp
uan Cole claims to be a major scholar. He is a tenured professor at the University of Michigan and the president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association. You wouldn't expect such a guy to be so thin-skinned and intellectually insecure. But that's the only conclusion I can draw from his tantrum this weekend. He insists that I'm a nobody, a "maroon," and, of course, an extreme right-wing warmonger. Yawn. All of this sturm and drang was the result of a one-paragraph substantive criticism of his position. I quoted him fairly and accurately, which he does not deny and which is a courtesy he does not return. His response contained a great deal of name-calling and chest-puffing about his C.V. He didn't have the courtesy or courage to even link to my answer to his screed.
Cole seems particularly keen on reminding people that he speaks Arabic (although he doesn't speak Arabic well enough to, well, speak it). Indeed, he seems generally keen on "proving" how smart he is. What's striking about this is that most serious scholars are more interested in showing, not telling. And the irony that I'm taking the higher road in our exchanges has not been lost on some people.
The Iraqi Threat Professor Cole did call attention to comments I made on CNN from prior to the war in which I gave credence to the idea that Saddam might one day get nuclear weapons. Guilty as charged, though his interpretation of my meaning is wildly tendentious as I noted. Of course, I was hardly alone on this point. As Kenneth Pollack wrote in the January 2004 Atlantic:
U.S. government analysts were not alone in these views. In the late spring of 2002 I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: Did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).
Other nations' intelligence services were similarly aligned with U.S. views. Somewhat remarkably, given how adamantly Germany would oppose the war, the German Federal Intelligence Service held the bleakest view of all, arguing that Iraq might be able to build a nuclear weapon within three years. Israel, Russia, Britain, China, and even France held positions similar to that of the United States; France's President Jacques Chirac told Time magazine last February, "There is a problem — the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is right...in having decided Iraq should be disarmed." In sum, no one doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Cole then writes, "Iraq never has been as close as two decades from having nuclear weapons." As I understand it, this is just not true. After the first Gulf War U.N. inspectors were dismayed to discover how advanced Saddam's program was. Pollack again:
Prior to 1991 the intelligence communities in the United States and elsewhere believed that Iraq was at least five, and probably closer to ten, years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Of course, after the war we learned that in 1991 Iraq had been only six to twenty-four months away from having a workable nuclear weapon.
Juan Cole, Warmonger Of course, even if Cole is right, it's not as relevant as he thinks, since the salient issue was not what the reality was, but whether the U.S. could take the chance that people like Cole were wrong. Cole is very comfortable, it seems, relying on the goodwill of America's enemies. I am grateful George W. Bush isn't.
Oh, and by the way, for all of Cole's insistence that I'm a warmonger and his claims that he is on record in January of 2003 saying Iraq wasn't a threat, you might get the impression he was against the war.
Not so much.
The next month he wrote: "I am an Arabist and happen to know something serious about Baathist Iraq, which paralyzes me from opposing a war for regime change in that country (Milosevic did not kill nearly as many people). If it is true that Chirac thinks the Baath party can be reformed from without, he is simply wrong." And the month after that: "I remain convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides." And so on.
Those Iranian Elections But, again, all of this is a sideshow. On the substance of my criticism of him, Cole cherry-picked a single issue to respond to — the democratic nature of the Iranian elections — and then distorted it. In my original column, I had criticized Cole for saying that the Iranian elections in 1997 were "much more democratic" than the Iraqi elections last week. I did not write that they were not democratic at all. Cole either deliberately ignored this point or was not a careful enough reader to catch it. Regardless, after a long and hysterically un-scholarly tirade, he made a fairly cogent case for the democratic nature of the elections in Iran. In the spirit of good faith and intellectual honesty, I responded that he made a "pretty good case" on that point though it smelled fishy to me. But I didn't agree that the Iranian elections were "much more democratic" as he had insisted.
In a follow-up, Cole selectively quoted me so as to make it seem that I admitted I was wrong, in effect pocketing a good-faith concession and then deliberately misrepresenting what I said. I did not admit I was wrong but he went on about how I should have known the facts before I wrote my initial column. "He is openly admitting that he speaks without having the slightest idea what he is talking about!" Cole exclaimed. This was transparently shabby and dishonest on his part. I made no such concession and he made no effort to address my objections or the objections of others I linked to.
Again, since I am apparently the only one in this exchange concerned with the substance, I will make my case. Basically, I still think it is absurd to say that the elections in Iran were "much more democratic" than the ones in Iraq. The nature of the regime in Iran was never open for debate in 1997 in any meaningful way. As Michael Ledeen noted when Cole first put forward the Iranian elections as a model:
When [Cole] says: "(the Iraqi election) is not a model for anything, and would not willingly be imitated by anyone else in the region. The 1997 elections in Iran were much more democratic..." he has really disqualified himself from being taken seriously. The 2005 Iraqi elections were wide open. Anyone could form a party and run. The 1997 elections in Iran were a sham. The government decided who could run. The guy who "won," Khatami, was "cleared" by the mullahs after they had purged more than three hundred other candidates.
The fact that President Khatami was in fact incapable of implementing any meaningful change to the regime illustrates what a sham that election was. Inherent to democracy is the notion that an elected official actually has the power and authority to act on the things he or she promises to do. That doesn't mean, of course, that an elected official must do what he promised to do for a system to be democratic. By that standard no nation in the world is democratic. Rather, there must be a good-faith understanding that votes can be translated into action. If it turns out that politicians are merely kabuki dancers for the public's amusement and that all significant decision-making authority resides in some star chamber of mullahs, that isn't democratic.
Also, since Cole keeps his ear to the ground on such things, he surely knows that many Iranians believe the elections were a sham. Are they to be discounted? The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that dissatisfaction with Iranian regime reaches 90 percent — presumably quite a few of these people think the 1997 elections didn't turn out as democratic as they hoped never mind as democratic as the Iraqi elections last week. Another good sign that the Iraqi elections were more democratic is that the Iraqi election has — I'm told — rattled officials in Riyadh, Damascus, and Cairo. Iran's 1997 elections were greeted with little more than a yawn. Indeed, just last week there were pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt.
Let me appeal to one more expert. In 2004 a noted Middle East scholar observed that the "free and fair" elections being demanded by Iraq's Ayatollah Sistani posed an "implicit challenge to the hard liners in Iran." Sistani's belief, the expert continued "that legitimate government must reflect the will of the sovereign people echoes Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau and Jefferson, and promises a sea change in Middle Eastern politics." The scholar lamented that the United States still appeared intent on "stage-managing" the elections a year ago. Overstating things a bit, this professor believed that if the Coalition Provisional Authority didn't go along with Sistani's plan it would make the Iraqi elections no more democratic that the Iranian ones where "the clerical Guardianship Council has excluded thousands of candidates from running, including sitting members of parliament" giving the Iranian system "more of the form than the substance of democracy."
"Iraqis must feel that the procedures that produce their interim government, even if not perfect, are as fair and democratic as possible under the circumstances," he concluded. "Should the United States disappoint them, it could give democracy a bad name and hurt not only the stability of Iraq but the fortunes of reform in Iran."
As we all know, President Bush gave into Sistani's demand and agreed to Sistani's "free and fair" elections. You would think this would have pleased the above scholar. Alas, it didn't, because the above scholar was Juan Cole himself writing in 2004. Funny how Cole once believed that if Sistani got his way Iraq would be much more democratic than Iran. But once that actually happened Cole suddenly said the opposite. It seems to me that Cole decides whether something is wise or unwise based upon whether it is bad or good for Bush. If it's good, it must be unwise and vice versa.
Perhaps I'm misreading Cole's own words. Perhaps I'm wrong about the Iranian system being as undemocratic as Cole described just one year ago. Maybe Cole has good arguments on his side. I just don't know because he hasn't offered any.
Karnak-Cole He did, however, read my mind. He writes:
The reason Mr. Goldberg is alarmed that I pointed this obvious fact out is that he wants to kill thousands of Iranians and thousands of US troops in a war of aggression on Iran. If the American public knows that there is a lively struggle between hardliners and conservatives in Iran, and that an American intervention there would be a huge disaster and would forestall the natural evolution of Iran away from Khomeinism, then they might not support Mr. Goldberg's monstrous warmongering.
That is why he attacked me.
Uh...help me out here. I attacked Cole to keep him from tipping off the American people about the struggle between "hardliners and conservatives" in Iran? (Did he really mean to say "hardliners and conservatives" — thatsounds like a super-lively debate.) I want to kill thousands of Americans and Iranians in an aggressive war? Someone draw me a diagram. Where does Cole get this stuff? Does he just make it up? This is the only column I've written specifically on Iran. Could someone show me the part where I lay out my monstrous warmongering agenda?
Last time I checked, scholars looked for this thing called "evidence."
Chicken-yawn-hawks Instead of offering any of that silly stuff he did post one e-mail from a reader supporting his position (that I am an awful person). This was fairly shabby too since I know he's received many thoughtful letters from readers — on all sides of the issue. But Cole instead chose to publish this one email the upshot of which called me a coward for not being in "the kill zone" as a supporter of the war. In short, he was calling me a chicken hawk.
Now, I don't take the chicken-hawk charge very seriously because it has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the arguments for or against war. But if you want to read one of the many times I've addressed the issue, you can read this. Or check out the late Michael Kelly's take. And here's Christopher Hitchens.
I admire and respect the military more than I could possibly express. They deserve our gratitude and support. I think — and hope! — that message has come through in my writings. But if not having served makes me a poor messenger in some peoples' eyes there's really nothing I can do or say that will change that. But how much do these people really want the message to depend on the messenger? If only military veterans or active-duty personnel can legitimately express political opinions in favor of the use of force — the logical upshot of this whole chicken-hawk argument — then Cole & Co. are the real militarists, if not fascists. Are the liberals who supported Clinton's war in Bosnia chicken hawks too? And if they are, does that mean that war was wrong?
Anyway, to sum up the substance of our own spat one more time: He predicted that these elections would be a disaster. After they weren't he dismissed the Iraqi election system as if it was especially flawed or undemocratic even though he seemed to support that system a year ago. Moreover, he deliberately concealed the fact such systems are used widely around the world including in South Africa in 1994. Does he think Nelson Mandela was undemocratically elected? He won't say. He oddly dismissed the election as being more like a "referendum" as if referendums are somehow alien to democracy. This is even more odd when you consider this election wasn't seen as a referendum on a bond for a sewage-treatment plant, but a referendum on Iraqi democracy itself. He suggests I'm a gruesome human being for supporting the war even though he pretty much did too. While dodging the issues he claims I'm unqualified to address the issues because I don't have his credentials. This is simply an extension of the chicken-hawk logic. Without the right paperwork, my ideas cannot be sound. Period.
The Great Debate This is either lost on Cole or it's a deliberate tactic stemming from his intellectual insecurity. Indeed, it's hardly as if no Arabic-speaking academics agree with me. Presumably he's attacking me and challenging me to a debate instead of them because he thinks he can bully me with his "I speak Arabic" schtick. Though if I'm the "maroon" he claims I am then you'd think I'd be beneath such an esteemed scholar. You'd think he'd be more eager to debate Fouad Ajami, Adeed Dawisha, Patrick Clawson, Michael Rubin, or Martin Kramer. That I'd like to see.
But hey, yeah, sure. If he's afraid of fighting in his own division, I'll step up. Obviously, his challenge to debate "Middle East issues" as he puts it, is another instance of his bad faith. As I've conceded more than once now, he knows more about the Middle East. And, frankly, he seems like precisely the kind of boarding-school rector with a God complex who'd try to win by subjecting me to a withering quiz about how many Shiite clerics I can name or how the Aswan dam was funded.
This raises the central point he is trying bury: The fundamental issue I raised in my column was not about the extent of his knowledge but the quality of his judgment. And on that question I am hardly alone in thinking that Cole's judgment is often laughable (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and ... oh you get the point).
If he wants to have a debate about the role of public intellectuals during wartime, President Bush's foreign policy, whether or not the Iraq war was justified, etc., I'm in. I understand he'll be in town later this year for some Middle East Studies confab. I'm sure he can find a room with a couple microphones and some chairs. If he does, I'll be there. But if he thinks we're going to debate his no-doubt-seminal paper, "Marking Boundaries, Marking Time: The Iranian Past and the Construction of the Self by Qajar Thinkers," he should think again. I hereby concede that I am unqualified to discuss the Qajar thinkers — or any other Qajars.
[edit] Hebron
History of the Jews in Hebron.
Hebron is called in Arabic בית אל חליל Beth al Chalil, "The House of the Beloved," because Isaac, the beloved son of Abraham, was born and educated here, and, as appears from Genesis 22:1, resided also here a long time. It is situated in the portion of Judah, 20 English miles south from Jerusalem, in a valley (Gen. 37:14). The mountains which surround it are the highest points of the mountains of Judah, and are 2664 feet above the surface of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a small town, or, more correctly speaking, a very large village, which consists of several divisions, each, so to say, constituting a village by itself. It contains several thousand Arabic inhabitants. On its eastern end is the cave of Machpelach מערת המכפלה, Arabic, Al Magr, i. e. the cave. It is also called the Fort of David, and is a very handsome and most ancient structure, built of immense stones, and surrounded with strong and high walls. It forms, in a measure, a fortress. Beneath the surface of the earth is the celebrated cave where the patriarchs lie buried. It is covered over with masonry, having a small opening on the top, through which the Mahomedans constantly lower burning lamps, and maintain there a perpetual light. Above this cavern is a mosque, built at a later date.
Hebron is mentioned but little in history after the destruction of Jerusalem, and I will therefore merely relate the few traces which I was able to find.
When Benjamin of Tudela travelled through Palestine in 4930 (1170), Hebron was entirely destroyed, probably through the wars of the Christians with the Saladdinian kings. He says, "Here is a large church, called St. Abraham; and it was, when the country was still in possession of the Ishmaelites, a Jewish Synagogue." This proves that, during the rule of the Mahomedans, before the Christians came, Jews must have lived there. About seventy years later, when Rabbi Pethachiah of Ratisbonne ר׳ פתחי׳ מריגנסבורג travelled through Palestine, it was already in a measure rebuilt; but no Jews were living in it. At the time of the Nachmonides in 5027 (1267), some Jews were found here, as he wrote to his son* that he was on the point of going to Hebron to select for himself a spot to be buried in. It appears, however, that they afterwards quitted it again, as Astori, in the year 5082 (1322), says nothing of any Jewish families in Hebron. In 5283 (1523), there lived here but ten Jewish families. When, in 5300 (1540), the celebrated Rabbi Jechiel Ashkenazi went to Hebron, he found in it many Caraites. He founded there a Jewish congregation; and it appears that he purchased a Synagogue, which exists to this day, and belongs to the Sephardin (Portuguese), from the Caraites. About twenty-five years ago there came several messengers from the Caraite congregation at Constantinople, to lay claim to the said Synagogue, alleging that it was originally their property; but they were easily and soon confuted, for they could not establish their allegation. Since the time of R. Jechiel to our own day, Hebron was uninterruptedly inhabited by Jews.
* See above, Period III., year 5027.
In 5594 (1834), Hebron met with a heavy calamity, since it was taken by storm on the 28th day of Tamuz (July), by Abraim Pacha, and given up to his soldiers for several days. One can better imagine than describe the scenes which were then enacted. Nearly all the Mahomedan inhabitants fled into the depth of the mountain range, but the Jews could not do this; besides which, they entertained but little fear, since they could not be viewed as rebels and enemies by Abraim, wherefore they fell an easy prey into the hands of the assailants. When the Pacha marched out to take Hebron, a petition was presented to him by the officers of the Jewish congregation in Jerusalem to take these unfortunate people under his protection, which he faithfully promised to do; but, notwithstanding this, they were not spared at the taking of the town, so that five Jews were purposely murdered, and all their property which had not. been buried under ground was either stolen or destroyed in the most wanton and cruel manner. Abraim did then indeed place a guard around their quarter of the town, but it was too late; and he said, "Whatever is already in the hands of the conquerors, the soldiers, cannot be demanded back again of them;" wherefore the whole Jewish community was sunk into poverty.
One of the leaders of the Hebron rebels was the SheichAbd al Rachman, who had his seat not far from the town Al Dura (see p. 113, Art. Adoraim). He had been for several years previously the principal personage of the environs, as far as the Dead Sea and the Djebl (Mount Seir). When Abraim Pacha had conquered the country, he fled, and the Pacha appointed in his place the Mutzelim, Abu Suwat, who had been even before this time an enemy of Abd al Rachman, and he therefore acted inimically towards those of his family who had been left behind. But when the government of Abraim came to an end, in 5601 (1841), the banished chief again appeared, greatly respected and with increased power. He also acquired anew a strong party, and became again the Sheich of the whole district. He thereupon caused Abu Suwat to be publicly executed in Hebron, and acquired gradually such authority that the Pacha of Jerusalem did not think it prudent to venture putting a check on his proceedings and actions; and the name of Abd al Rachman sounded more fearful and was more respected than that of the Sultan. The whole vicinity was at that time quite secure, and one could, with the greatest safety, travel among the Arabs and Bedouins; because they were strictly prohibited to rob or to make their usual exactions, since this right belonged to the Sheich alone. He was exceedingly cuning, and never missed making the capture of those he pursued in a witty and ludicrous manner, and he was particularly fortunate in his expeditions. So it happened that on his flight he was caught by the soldiers of Abraim in such a way that they had got hold of his red terbush:* he nevertheless succeeded in eluding their grasp, merely leaving the empty terbush in their hands. Towards the Jews he permits no ill-treatment; but he is a most insatiable leech, as scarcely a day passes on which some demand is not made, which, though not presented as an extortion, comes in a worse shape yet--in that of a request or petition, with an understanding that a threat may be added to enforce compliance. And, as his whole family, from little to big, imitate, each for his own benefit, the magnanimous head of the house, it is almost impossible to live among such leeches; and actually the greater part of the Israelites of Hebron have left it and settled in Jerusalem.
* A peculiar long cap which the Turks wear, though it is not much used among the Arabs, who adhere to the turban.
In the year 5605 (1845), Abd al Rachman's two brothers rebelled against him, and laid claim to his government, that is, they wanted the right to plunder: they procured adherents, and a regular partisan warfare ensued; in consequence of which, Abd al Rachman was driven out. He next collected some Arabs, and had several bloody fights with his brothers; and it appeared that his good luck had forsaken him. But at length his star again became in the ascendant, through which, or rather through his heavy gold, he succeeded to induce the Pacha of Jerusalem to take his part, who then marched against Hebron with a large force, in the month of Sivan, 5606 (June, 1846). He took the town after several skirmishes, and reinstated Abd al Rachman in his government. On this occasion the Jews suffered severely, many were dangerously wounded at the taking of the town, and deprived of all their property. The two rebel brothers took to flight, and have not been heard of up to the time of writing this, in 5609 (1849). Abd al Rachman governs therefore unopposed, and is very industriously engaged in filling up the great deficiency in his heap of gold, which had become diminished through the war with his brothers, by his usual exactions from those subject to his rule.
Hebron has two congregations; first the Sephardim, containing about 60 families, who have a very ancient Synagogue, as I have stated already; and secondly the Ashkenazim, consisting solely of about 50 families, since many of them have left and moved to Jerusalem. This congregation, however, has been in existence only about thirty years. Still, they have two Synagogues, one built thirty years, and one fifteen years ago.
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S T A T E M E N T
A SEPHARDIC PERSPECTIVE ON HEBRON
Issued by the International Sephardic Leadership Council in regards to the crisis in Hebron, Israel
DOCUMENTS / PHOTOS BELOW
January 20, 2006
Avraham, the father of the Jewish people, selected Hebron as the first home for the Jewish people. There, Avraham purchased the historic Cave of the Makhpela. Other than Jerusalem, Hebron is indeed the holiest location for the Jewish people. The city is mentioned in the Torá over 70 times: "Avram removed his tent, and came and lived in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord." Hebron is the place where Sarah died and was buried. Hebron was King David's first capital, even before Jerusalem. Jewish archeologists in Hebron have uncovered pottery, jewelry and ancient homes from the time of Avraham and Sarah. Unfortunately, Hebron, like all of the land of Israel, suffered under foreign occupation for 2,000 years. Even so, there have always been small populations of Jews living in this holy city.
Over the many centuries, while the Jewish people were exiled from Eres Yisrael (the land of Israel), Hebron, like Jerusalem, retained a sparse Jewish population, fed by a small but constant stream of pilgrims. In 1166, at the young age of 31, Maimonides wrote, "And on the first day of the week, the ninth day of the month of Marheshvan, I left Jerusalem for Hebron to kiss the graves of my forefathers in the Cave of Makhpela. And on that very day, I stood in the cave and I prayed, praised be God for everything." It's interesting to note that the building over the cave was not built by the Arabs but by the Christians of the Byzantine church, it was only later converted into a mosque. This is also true of the foundation under the gold dome that sits atop the Temple Mount, this was initially started as a church, and only later captured and transitioned into a mosque.
The early period of Arab conquest over the Byzantines (638-1099) was said to be a relief for the Jews of Eres Yisrael. But then, in 1099, the Christian Crusaders invaded Hebron and renamed the city Avraham. The name was changed back to Hebron after their defeat by Saladin, the Kurdish-Muslim warrior, in 1187. The Encyclopedia Judaica indicates that in regards to this period there is evidence showing that it is ". . . probable that there was a permanent settlement in Hebron at that time. The testimony of historians from an earlier period and documents discovered in the course of time…give a fairly clear picture of the continuity of the Jewish settlement in Hebron."
One of the earliest pieces of evidence that an Arab named Omar gave permission to the Jews to build a cemetery and a synagogue near the cave of Makhpela is corroborated in both Christian and Muslim sources.
The Mamluk warrior Arabs took control of the city and kept it for 328 years. The Mamluk rulers created their armies by collecting non-Muslim slave boys, converting them to Islam, and training them as soldiers. The Mamluks lost Hebron to the Ottoman Empire in 1516.
Jews born in the Diaspora desired to live in the holy cities for generations. In their desire to get to Eres Yisrael in the 14th century, Jews dangerously traveled on Christian ships from Spain to the ports of Alexandria and Beirut. One man in particular, a Sephardic astronomer fleeing the island of Majorca in 1392, dreamed of seeing the "peaceful habitation" of Jerusalem. Jews left from Castile and made their way to the ports of Catalonia and Valencia. Jews from Saragossa were actively involved with helping their fellow Jews travel to Eres Yisrael. The literature mentioned Jews from Spain going to Damascus and Jerusalem. As early as 1333, there is an account from Hakham Yishak Hilo of Larissa (Greece), who arrived in Hebron and observed Jews working in the cotton trade and glassworks. He noted that in Hebron there was an, "Ancient synagogue in which they prayed day and night."
The most notable influx of Jews into Hebron and Jerusalem came in 1517, after the Ottoman Turks had taken control of the land of Israel. With this change in administration, came an influx of Iberian Jews from Salonika to Jerusalem and the surrounding cities. These were the Jews that had been forced out of Spain in 1492, only 25 years earlier. For those Jews-who, when in Spain, could only dream of living in the Holy Land-this was a life changing opportunity. In fact, those Spanish refugees who had been dwelling in Ottoman Salonika could now legally travel to Ottoman Palestine, where they could start a new life in Jerusalem, Hebron, or other ancient Jewish city. This would be the commencement of the influx and rebuilding of serious Jewish community life in Eres Yisrael.
During this period of great change, a certain Menahem ben Moshe Bavli, author of the book Ta'amei Ha-Misvot (The Reasons For The Misvot) migrated from Ottoman Baghdad and became one of the pioneers that settled in Hebron after 1492. With the large resettlement of Jews into Hebron in 1540, led by Hakham Malkiel Ashkenazi, the Avraham Avinu Synagogue was built. This location became a center of study for Kabalah. The synagogue was restored in 1738 and enlarged in 1864. The influx of Iberian Jews in the 16th century raised the Jewish population of Hebron to a point higher than it had been during the Roman occupation nearly 1500 years prior.
Upon making aliyah from the Italian city of Bartenura, the great 15th century Sephardic rabbi, Ovadia, wrote, "Over the Cave of Makhpela is a large building of the Ishmaelites, who regard the sacred site with fear and awe. No person, Jew or Ishmaelite, is allowed to descend to the cave; and there is a small window in the outer wall of the building, which is above the grave of Avraham, and there the Jews are allowed to pray. And in Hebron live 20 Jewish families, all of them scholars, some of them descendants of the Marranos, who came to find refuge under the wings of the Divine Presence . . . I lived in Hebron for many months."
A famous scholar who migrated to Hebron was Moroccan born Hakham Avraham Mordekhai Azoulay, author of Hessed le-Avraham (1685). He also authored the Kiryat Arba' as well as an important source on genealogy and life in Fez and Eres Yisrael.
Jews not only migrated to Hebron, but Hebron's Jews ventured away to other communities for the purpose of raising funds and teaching. This was the job of the Rav Ha-Kolel, the rabbi responsible for raising funds for the poor people in the community. From Casablanca to Halab (Aleppo) and from Alexandria to Mosul, they traversed the dangerous highways and treacherous seas, as emissaries of their communities.
More than two centuries ago, Avraham Ruvio went abroad to raise funds for printing a book his father Mordekhai had written. Avraham's father was the head of the rabbinical court of Hebron in the 18th century. Mordekhai had written a religious manuscript that was eventually published at Livorno in 1793, and another printed in Salonika over 40 years later. Avraham Hayyim of Hebron was born in Fez, Morocco. As a rabbi of Hebron, he traveled from community to community seeking sedaka (charity) for the Talmud-Torá (Jewish children's school) in Hebron. Sadly, while traveling on this most honorable mission in the Turkish city of Monastir (modern Greece), Avraham died.
From the Balkans came Moshe ben Avraham Ferrera of Sarajevo. Ferrera traveled to Eres Yisrael in 1823, and became head of the rabbinical court at Hebron; he died four decades later in 1864. Even though both Smyrna (Izmir) and Hebron were both considered part of the Sultan's empire, Smyrna could not compare to the holiness of Eres Yisrael for the spiritual Jew. For this reason Sephardim migrated from one location of the Ottoman Empire to another.
From the icy mountains of Macedonia to the scorching deserts of Syria, and from the Maghreb to the Fertile Crescent they came. One notable was Hakham Yosef Rafael ben Haim Yosef Hazan who had relocated from coastal Turkey to Hebron, later becoming the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.
In 1831, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt took Gaza, Hebron, Jerusalem and other cities with 40,000 men from the Turkish Sultan. Pasha had arrived in Egypt in 1799 along with the Ottoman Expedition to drive out the French. Wanting to be an independent ruler, but couldn't, he declared war against the Sultan. Although he marched his troops as far as the Syrian cities, an internal revolt occurred. This stemmed from Pasha's order to collect firearms from the population. These measures, and others alienated, his fellow Muslims but were received with satisfaction from Jews who had always feared the armed Arabs.
In 1858, Hakham Eliahu ben Suliman (Shelomo) Mani, traveled from Ottoman Baghdad to Hebron and was elected chief rabbi of the city. He remained as chief rabbi for 40 years, passing away at the age of 75.
Hebron has been considered such a holy location, that Jews would make the precarious journey there, not just to live, but to die. From across land and sea, on foot and with beasts, Jews would journey to settle in Hebron and live out their remaining years. Historic literature demonstrates Jews emigrating from the Balkans, Thrace, Venice and Anatolia. Hakham Yehuda Havilo, the Chief Rabbi of Alexandria, emigrated north across the desert to Hebron for just this reason. Chief Rabbi and Dayan (rabbinical judge) Hakham Yosef Fintsi of Belgrade emigrated to the sacred soil of Hebron when he was elderly. For centuries, Jews have migrated to the holy land if for no other reason than to fulfill a final misva of burial there.
Hebron was a poor city throughout its time of Turkish occupation. The 1839 Montefiore Census notes that Jews were employed as silversmiths, clerks, bakers, slaughterers, but most of all, professional Torá scholars. The community was administered by the Chief Rabbi and a council of seven members. The following were chief rabbis of Hebron: Israel Sebi (1701-1731); Avraham Castel (1757); Aharon Alfandari (1772); Mordekhai Ruvio (c. 1785); David Melamed (c. 1789); Eliakim (end of 18th centurt); Hayyim ha-Levi Polacco (c. 1840); Hai Cohen (1847-52); Moshe Pereira (1852-64); Elia Suliman (Shelomo) Mani (1864-1878); Rahamim Joseph Franco (1878-1901); Hezekiah Medini (former chief rabbi of Karasu-Bazar in the Crimea, known as the Hakambashi Wakili who was the chief rabbi in 1901). Bension Koenka served as a chief rabbi of Hebron during turn of the 20th century. Prior to this, the respected Spanish sage was the head of the rabbinical court at Jerusalem.
In 1879, Haim Yisrael Romano of Constantinople constructed a large and elaborate home known as Beit Romano. The home functioned as a domicile for visiting Turkish Sephardim. The building included a synagogue, called the Istanbuli Synagogue. Today, Beit Romano houses Yeshivat Shavei Hebron, a school for young men of Hebron. Prior to 1929, Hebron possessed four Sephardic Talmud-Torás. There were three mutual-aid societies and a free dispensary for medications. During the period of British occupation of Palestine, the British expropriated the Beit Romano and used it as a police station; after the 1929 riots, the Jewish survivors were brought there.
Violence and unrest was never distant to the Jews who suffered under continued Arab coercion. On August 23, 1929, Arabs, under direction of their Islamic religious leaders (muftis), attacked the Jews with a most savage zeal wielding axes, knives, and other weapons upon the defenseless community. They not only murdered Jews, but they utilized ghastly methods of torture, including rape, castration and limb amputations. They assailed Jews throughout the holy land, from Safed to Hebron. (First Hand Account Here) VICTIMS VICTIMS
CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS - WARNING - GRAPHIC
Scores of Jews, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, were murdered during this gory rampage. In Hebron, the Islamic murderers killed Hakham Hanokh Hasson, the chief Sephardic rabbi, and his entire family. The prominent Hakham, Yosef Castel, locked himself in his home, but Arab mobs broke in-murdering him and his family-then setting the home ablaze.
The last Sephardic rabbi in Hebron, subsequent to the 1929 pogroms, was HakhamMeir Franco, who had lost his son-in-law in the murderous frenzy. Shortly after the massacre, Hakham Franco, with a number of other rabbis, produced a small brochure in Ladino, the language of the community. It was an appeal to fellow Sephardic Jews throughout the world to assist financially in the rebuilding of the community of Hebron. The brochure detailed the destruction, and contained pictures of the synagogues and holy places before the Arab destruction. It educated the reader about the holy city where their forefathers were buried and about the ancient Jewish community. The Spanish language volume expressed urgency for help, communicating that the community desperately needed funds for rebuilding.
Partially because the British had no great love for Jews, as well as the fact the British did not want to provoke the Arab world, the British government was unwilling to subsidize the costs for a large police force in Palestine to control the Arabs. In addition, the British adamantly did not allow any independent legal Jewish self-defense force. Thus, the Jews were disarmed and had virtually no protection against rioting Arabs.
Later, in a bizarre twist of fate, the British helped the Arabs become the undeserving masters over the Jews. The British essentially sided with the Arabs and issued a set of discriminatory regulations. One restricted Jewish rights to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The riots of 1929 were investigated internationally and reported in the Hope Report. According to the report, the riots were instigated by none other than MuftiAmin al-Husseini, the same man who, one decade later, would be working hand-in-hand with Adolph Hitler to murder the Jews in Arab countries and the Balkans during the Holocaust.
Hebron was liberated in 1967, and today has more than 600 Jews, both Sephardim and Ashkenazim. The city is bordered to the east by the large settlement of Kiryat Arba, whose population now reaches 6,000. Even today, attacks and murders are again the norm, not the exception. Not only are these courageous Jews constantly on the defense from the Arabs, but they continually have to defend themselves from the international media, which attempts to make them look like criminals. Hebron and all of the holy land was stolen from the Jews by the savage Romans, occupied by murderous medieval Christian armies, and more than once occupied by various power-hungry Islamic regimes.
The Jewish people liberated the city of Hebron, by the grace of God, only 38 years ago, but now-three decades later-the international community has fallen for Arab propaganda that Hebron belonged to some mythical country of "Palestine." The world now seeks to take Hebron away from the Jews, and give it to the Arabs. A few years before he died, Arafat shouted, "Are there no stones left in Hebron? Where are the stones and where are the mobs? Prepare yourselves for a struggle if the Israelis do not retreat from Hebron."
Sadly, the bizarre thinking of many people (Jews and non-Jews alike), is if we reward those who kill us, with land-they will stop killing us-and we shall have peace. However, multiple times, Arabs have stated that their purpose is not to have peace, but to, "Liberate all of Palestine." This includes Hebron.
In clear speech: Arabs plan to exterminate all the Jews and take their land. There is an old saying, "When someone says they are going to kill you-believe them." The Palestinian Authority, in speaking to their people, sum up their goals perfectly. As they once said, "Reach the sea and hoist the flag of Palestine over Tel Aviv."
Today, the Jews of Hebron face not only gunfire and stabbings, but also political attacks aimed at removing the city from the sovereignty of the State of Israel. The United States, Britain, and all of the European Union have officially decided that Hebron, as well as other communities in Judea and Samaria, should be turned over to the Arabs and made part of a new country, Palestine.
Anyone who believes in the Torá must also believe that Hebron is, and must always be, Jewish. To find the deed to the land and to the Cave of the Makhpela, one needs to look no further than Genesis 23.
PROOF THE SHUK IN HEVRON BELONGS TO THE JEWS - ALL THE JEWS
NOT ONE FAMILY
HEBREW TRANSLATION HERE
HELP STOP THE SIEGE OF HEBRON - PUBLIC PRESSURE HELPS
CALL AND WRITE TO DEFENSE MINISTER SHAUL MUFAZ: TEL: 03-697-5436 FAX: 03-697-6218 EMAIL: SAR@MOD.GOV.IL
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From: JUICE Administration <juice@virtual.co.il> To: geography@virtual.co.il Subject: JUICE Biblical Geography 1
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World Zionist Organization
Jewish University in CyberspacE
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Course: Biblical Geography Lecture: 1/12 Lecturer: Eli Birnbaum and Robin Treistman
Welcome All.
We are about to embark on an effort to bring Biblical Israel into perspective. Each week we will explore a different area of the country and its relationship to the Bible, while tracing its history until recent times. Ten sites (cities or regions) plus Jerusalem were chosen for their historical scope as well as for their classical interest. It must be noted at the start that there is so much history and study involved in these sites that many of them can form the basis of an entire course. As you all know, there are many more such sites in Israel, but due to time constraints we must limit ourselves. As a result, we have had to condense some of the material so as to present an overview of each location with enough source material to allow you to discover far more with a bit of self study.
Let us introduce ourselves:
- My name is Eli Birnbaum, by profession I am a counseling psychologist,
educator and Internet person (whatever that means). My real love is Jewish History, on which I have written a book and a number of articles.
- I am Robin Treistman. Social worker by profession, I currently work as an
"informal" Jewish educator, specializing in the internet. In addition, the subject of the Land of Israel and its place in Jewish life has been the subject of articles I wrote and sessions I directed.
The Lectures Each lecture will begin with a geographic survey of the area and then will explore its importance in a geo-historical perspective. Although our emphasis will be on the Biblical period, we will deal with post Biblical history as it relates to the location. The exception is to do with Jerusalem. Due to the plethora of material we have decided to divide that lecture into two parts.
Reading materials One of the difficulties in studying on the Internet is the lack of source materials. We have tried to help this along by putting up pictures and maps for each of the lectures. In order to get the most out of the lectures first of all we recommend a few excellent books such as Zev Vilnay's "Legends" series and Yannai Perlman's, Historical sites in Israel,. Another, which can give you an excellent perception of what the land was like a century ago, is Colonel Charles Wilson's The Land of Judea. If your Hebrew is good enough we highly recommend the "Atlas Daat Mikrah." Each lecture will be supplied with a bibliography and suggestions for further reading. We included at the end of this first lecture a description of classical Jewish sources which we refer to in every lecture. You may wish to keep it on hand for a quick reference.
Biblical names In order to be synchronized with other texts and resource material, we will be using the anglicized versions of the biblical names (e.g. Hebron for Chevron, Abner for Avner). The ideal format for such a course would be to complete each lecture with an on-hand site visit. Although this is impossible, we have as we previously pointed out put up pictures, maps and diagrams which are accessible on our WEB site. Each lecture will have the related URL for that particular location. Please don't hesitate to write us regarding any technical problems.
Below is a list of the sites that will be covered in the twelve lectures.
The order of presentation will be as follows: 1. Hebron 2. Shechem (Nablus) 3. Golan 4. Etzion Gaver (Eilat) and Southern Negev 5. Judean Desert (including Herodian and Bethlehem) 6. Beit El 7. Ayalon Valley and its environs 8. Jerico 9. Lachish 10. BeerSheba 11. Jerusalem: Bible Times through the Maccabean dynasty 12. Jerusalem: Herod through the modern era
HEBRON
Have a glance at your average daily newspaper and you may find that
aside from Jerusalem, probably no city receives more attention then Hebron Nothing lights the fires of contention within today's Israeli political spheres more than the name Hebron. For many Jews it conveys the essence of our claim to the land of Israel, for many Arabs it is the symbol of nationalism - for both it is the Cave of the Patriarchs, one of whom we share.
GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION
( see inserted map) http://wzo.org.il/juice/map/hebron/index.html
Hebron is perched on a hill 960 meters above sea level, approximately 25 kilometers south of Jerusalem making it the highest ancient city in the land. The actual site of the ancient city is on a hill today known as Tel Rumeida, which is actually on the side of the mountain rather then on top. Hebron is situated at the very end of the Jerusalem hill country. On its southern border begins the Negev desert, to the east stretches the Judean desert. The mountains of Jerusalem rise in the north and the west falls away to the low hills of Judea (Shephela) and the coastal plains. As such it sits strategically on the main north-south axis from Beer Sheba to Jerusalem.
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To reach Hebron from the north you must pass by Rachel's Tomb outside Bethlehem. Rachel is the only one of the matriarchs not buried in Hebron. (See Genesis 35; 19) . Continue due south past Solomon's pools, and the valley of Bracha where Jehoshaphat and his army gave thanks for their victory over - Ammon , Moab and Edom (II Chronicles 20:26)
The surrounding terraced hills are planted with olive and almond trees, fig groves, and vineyards. In the early summer you can see the "Fallahin" (local farmers) scything the winter wheat by hand, and then separating the grain from its stalks by tossing it in the air with wooden pitchfork.
According to tradition, the burial places of Noah, Cain, Nathan the prophet, Gad the seer and Jonah's father lie on these rugged hills.
BIBLICAL HISTORY
Hebron is inextricably linked to one name - Abraham. The Arabs call it Kahlil, named for Abraham who is also called el-Khalil- er-Rachman (the friend of God). The site of his tomb is known in Arabic as Haram el-khalil.
There is a hill approximately two miles north of Hebron which is the probable location of the village where Abraham spent some of his last years. Abraham moved his tents there and built an altar. In Hebrew this place is known as Alonei Mamreh, the Terebinths (oaks) of Mamre (Genesis 13:18). In 1927 the archeologist Father A.E. Mader found stones of an ancient altar and the traces of a huge tree that had once grown there, with much of the root system still visible. There is another "tourist " oak of Abraham which can bee seen slightly south of the city. Although the tree is certainly quite a few hundred years old it is not really an terebinth but rather a holm oak.
We read about Hebron again in Genesis when Abraham (c. 1675 BCE) is looking for a place to bury his wife Sarah (Genesis 23). Abraham approaches Efron ben Zohar of the children of Heth and asks to buy a burial ground. Abraham is offered it for free but refuses, insisting on paying "full price" for the land.
One of the great historical/biblical ironies is beginning to be played out here. Rabbi Yudan (3rd C.)( Bereshit Rabba 79) states "Three places, although part of God's promise to the Jewish people, were bought for money. Why? "Because one day the nations are going accuse you of stealing their land. These three places are destined to be contentious between the Jews and other nations. But we will answer that we bought them and paid in full". They are Hebron, Jerusalem and Joseph's tomb in Shechem (Nablus). The first Jewish purchase in Israel was Hebron.
The heart of Hebron is without doubt the Cave of the Patriarchs. (See general view of Hebron and the Tomb)
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In Hebrew it is known as the Double Cave - Ma'arat Hamachpelah. There are many explanations of this term: some refer to their architectural designs, that of a double cave (Babylonian Talmud aka Talmud Bavli Eruvin 53a). Some say because of the couples buried there - Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah (Pirkei D'rabbi Eliezer chapter 20). Still others say it refers to four giants who may be buried there. On a more philosophical note the Zohar in numerous places calls it the opening of the Garden of Eden (Gan Eden). Rabbi Moses Cordovero, a student of the Ari in Safed (16th C.), writes in his book Or Hachama (Light of the Sun) "Don't think it really means a physical opening but rather the focal point where the physical and the spiritual can meet". The term "double cave" means the two worlds, this world and the world to come - these meet in Hebron.
Most commentators agree that Hebron was the probable location of the first "Jewish" army of 318 volunteers who went after the 4 kings who kidnapped Lot (Genesis 14). According to the Midrash Tanchuma, after the death and burial of Isaac (c. 1531 BCE), his son Jacob who had already bought the birthright, offered his twin brother Esau either a portion in the cave or gold. "What do I need a cave for? I'll take the cash".
Hebron is also the site from where Joseph began his journey to meet his brothers, a journey which ended in his being sold into slavery. He traveled straight up the Hebron-Nablus road, passing through what is now Jerusalem (Genesis 37;14) see inserted map if you need the perspective.
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Later (Genesis 50) when Esau heard of Jacob's death, (c. 1504 BCE), he arrived with troops and tried to prevent his burial. "Where is your proof that he bought this burial ground from me?" Esau demanded. "In Egypt" was the reply. "You must have proof or I will not let you bury him". Jacob's son Naftali ran back to Egypt to retrieve it. In the meantime everyone was waiting. Chusin the son of Dan, Jacob's grandson asked "Hey, what's happening?" "We are waiting for Naftali to return" he was told. "What? And in the meantime Jacob's body will lie in the sun without burial?" He (another source says it was actually Judah - Talmud Bavli Gittin 55) immediately took a sword and lopped off Esau's head. The head began to roll until it fell into the cave. Esau's troops, totally demoralized, buried him in the fields nearby and Jacob's funeral continued unimpeded (Talmud Bavli Sota 13b).
The Cave of the Patriarchs was destined to become the foremost place of pilgrimage for prayer (aside from the temple itself). Today it is a common sight to see people praying at the ancient gravesite. The Zohar in various contexts talks at length (Zohar Genesis 225, Leviticus 70) of the power of the site, referring to the forefathers as the Sleepers of Hebron. "Each time the world needs mercy...the Sleepers of Hebron awaken and rise to Gan Eden. There the spirits of the righteous are cloaked in light ... who petition the great soul who petitions the Lord, and all ask for mercy for the living, and God for their sake forgives the world" (Zohar Genesis 39a). The actual cave sits well below the present day area and the layout of the cenotaphs is based on Talmudic sources. See pictures of the inside layout and tomb of Isaac.
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Caleb ben Yefuneh, one of the twelve men sent by Moses to "spy out the land", (Numbers 13) was more and more certain that all was not going as planned. He decided to go out of his way to Hebron in order to pray for guidance (Zohar Shelach 158b). This act strengthened his resolve and allowed him and Joshua to form their own opinion and not be swayed by the others who feared entering the country. Much of the land around Hebron was later given to Caleb's descendants.
See map on Conquest of the land http://wzo.org.il/juice/map/map4.htm
In the year C. 1240 BCE Joshua began the conquest of the land. After conquering Jerico and Ai the Children of Israel proceeded to their next conquest: To Gibeon whose inhabitants rather than fight agreed to a truce. Five "kings" from Jebus (Jerusalem), Jarmuth, Lachish, Eglon and Hebron joined forces to stop the Israelites and also to punish the Gibeonites for submitting to Joshua. In a major battle in the Valley of Ayalon they were defeated, enabling Joshua to proceed south where he and Caleb captured Hebron (c. 1250), making it the district capital of Judea. Hebron was also declared a Levitical town and as a refuge (Ir Miklat) for anyone who was guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
In the Year 1007 BCE Hebron comes into its own as the most important city in Israel. Saul and his three sons (see Samuel I:31) are slain in the Gilboa. Soon afterwards David asked God "Where should I go now?" and the Lord replied "To Hebron" (see Samuel II 2;1). It is important to remember that David came from Bethlehem, which is only about 18 kilometers to the north. He had strong family alliances in many of the villages between Hebron and Jerusalem.
Although Saul was dead, his commander Abner still swore fealty to his house and championed Saul's surviving son, Ish Boshet, as the king of Israel. Abner was a brilliant general who succeeded in 4 years in ridding most of the country of the Philistines. The two armies, one led by Abner the other led by Joab, David's general, clashed again and again over a period of two years (1051-1049), during which time David consistently won more support.
Read Samuel II chapter 3 for the tragic and dramatic story of Abner, David and Joab. Remember that Joab was furious at Abner, holding him responsible for the death of his brother Ashael (Samuel II 3;27). David buried Abner ben Ner in Hebron, just outside the Cave of the Patriarchs (c 1003 BCE) where his grave can be seen to this day.
With the news of Abner's death Ish Boshet ended his quest for the throne, and all the tribes of Israel gathered in Hebron. David was 30 years old when he became King of Israel. He reigned for 40 years. For the first seven and a half he reigned in Hebron over all of Israel and Judah.
Ish Boshet himself was soon assassinated and David livid at the deed, cut off the assassins' hands and hung their bodies at the "Pool of Hebron" (II Samuel 4; 12). There are many historians that place the pool near the main Street. Today it is known as Birkat es-Sultan the Pool of the Sultan.
The rebellion of Ish Boshet was the harbinger of things to come. The kingdom of David lasted from 1004 BCE to 586 BCE when most of the inhabitants of Judea were deported. Those of the separatist Kingdom of Israel (which will be dealt with in another lesson) were deported in 720 BCE. Some historians estimate that approximately one million Jews were taken into exile. In their place came the Idumeans, a tribe from the south, who settled in the city (c 587 BCE).
According to most commentators only 45,000 people returned between 538 and 458 BCE when the Persian King, Cyrus, allowed the Jews to return after the Babylonian exile. The actual reckoning of the exile is until the Temple was built in 515 BCE. In all probability the Jews returned to Hebron only with the second group in approximately 445 BCE.
POST BIBLICAL HISTORY
Jews evidently did return to Hebron after the first exile, but not in large numbers. Nor did they participate in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and the temple. Hebron was relegated to a backwater town which people would visit to honor the patriarchs. Judah Hamacabi, leader of the Hasmonean Revolt, attacked the city, which was mostly inhabited by Idumeans, and destroyed the wall in 164 BCE after the defeat of Lysias in the battle of Bet Zur. His nephew Jonathan Hyrkanus completed the work and forced the Idumeans to either leave or convert.
Herod (4 BCE- 39 CE), appointed King of the Jews by the Romans, was of Idumean descent. He built a thick wall (2.25 meters) 12 meters high around the Tomb in order to provide some measure of safety and comfort. One of the stones on the northern wall is 7.5 meters long.
It is only in the year 69 CE that Hebron regained strategic importance. This was the year before the final destruction of the Temple. Rome was at the peak of its strength and tried to enforce its rule and way of life on the Jews. Encouraged by a few leaders, the people revolted against the harsh decrees of Rome. They fought with a great deal of courage, but disunity led to their downfall. Actually that is a mild term for the internal fighting and civil was that rent the people. One of its leaders was John of Gischala who controlled the Zealots in Jerusalem. Another was Simon Bar Giora, who although not a brilliant strategist was courageous and physically powerful.
Simon led an attack on Hebron, which was held at the time by the Idumeans. Although he initially didn't defeat them he did succeed in capturing the town, which had large stores of corn and supplies (Josephus, The war of the Jews Book 4 Chapter 9). This helped him in his further conquests of Judea and led him eventually to Massada. His holding of the town was short-lived, for in April of that year Cerelius the Roman general destroyed the town massacring many of its inhabitants. The only strongholds left were Jerusalem, Herodion, Machaerus and Massada. These too fell soon afterwards. In the year 70 CE the Romans gathered all surviving Jews by the "Oak of Hebron" and sold them.
One of the classical misconceptions people have is that after the revolt and destruction of the Temple there were no longer Jews in Hebron. In reality Jews returned soon after the revolt and since they did not for the most part participate in the Revolt of Bar Kochaba (135 CE) they were left alone. The Jewish presence in Hebron was maintained even after the onset of Byzantine rule in Judea. We know from Sosominus (5th C) and [[Antoninus Mephlecentinus]] (6th C) of constant pilgrimages of Jews to the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
After the Arab conquest (638 CE) the Jews were given permission to build a cemetery and synagogue near the Tomb. In the 9th Century, a Karaite scholar Zedakah b. Shomron writes about a permanent Jewish presence. He is further qualified by R' Saadia the Hebroni, who was evidently the "keeper of the Cave of the Patriarchs" and wrote soon after, "We pray every day for our Rabbi (Rabbi Avyatar Hacohen) in the tomb".
The Arab historian, El Makdesi, described at the turn of the century, "a synagogue and central kitchen which the Jews had set up for all the pilgrims rich and poor." At the beginning of the twelfth century [[Godfrey de Bullion]], fresh from his capture of Jerusalem and his massacre of the Jews, takes the city and calls it Castellion Saint Abraham. They changed the mosque and the synagogue to a church and expelled the Jews.
Two important visitors arrived during the same century - Maimonidies in 1166 and Benjamin of Toledo in 1171. Neither of them mentions any Jewish presence, although Benjamin talks at length about the hundreds of people who sent bodies to be buried near the tomb.
In 1187 in Judea, Salah a Din briefly succeeded in exerting a Moslem presence, but Richard the Lion Hearted soon ousted him. Finally in 1260 the Berber leader Ruchan a Din took the city and established Mameluke rule which continued until 1517. There is strong evidence of a small Jewish community, although the relationship with the Moslems depended on the local ruler. Sir John Mondeville writes that the Jews and Christians were "treated like dogs." Often they were not permitted to pray in the tomb. At other times they had to pay high "taxes" for the right to pray, but at least for the most part they were left alone. Many Jewish and Christian visitors wrote about the community, among them a student of Nachmanides (1270), Rabbi Ishtori Haparchi (1322), Stephen von Gumfenberg (1449), Rabbi Meshulam from Voltara (1481) and Rabbi Ovadia Bartenura, a famous biblical commentator (1489).
Despite the Ottoman conquest in which many Jews were killed, (1517) their presence in Hebron continued, although for the most part they were not allowed to pray in the tomb itself. In 1540 Rabbi Malkiel Ashkenazi even bought a courtyard and established the Synagogue of Abraham Avinu.
>From time to time the population dwindled as the result of plagues (1525, 1619, 1662, and 1865) but for the most part there were about 20-30 Jewish families which were heavily taxed. By the mid 18th century the Jewish community numbered about 120 families. Although the community itself was always in debt, it always attracted newcomers. Numerous documents attest to the fact that every few years-another rabbinical scholar moved to Hebron. Jews also took part in local industries. As early as 1333 Rabbi Isaac Hilo from Greece reported that Jews were working in the cotton trade and glassworks for which Hebron became famous. One visitor described Jews as the mainstay of the local wine industry (Edward Robinson 1836).
>From time to time there were persecutions, instigated either by the Christians (1735) or by the Moslems (1765, 1775, 1814). There were numerous battles between the Ottoman Empire and local upstarts, often with the Jews in the middle (1773, 1827, 1834, 1841, 1851 etc.). One of them even included a blood libel for allegedly killing the son of a local Sheik (1775).
Yet the community was continually revitalized. Haim Baruch of Ostrave (1814) established just when the community was at its lowest financial ebb a fund and soon after Moses Montefiore visited (1835), bringing much needed relief. One of the important modern influences was the Chabad movement, which in 1819 sent the 15 families to live in Hebron; these were the first of many. In 1852 the Sassoon family of Bombay donated funds for the building of the Chabad Synagogue.
Probably the leading figure of the 19th century was [[Simon Menashe Sokolov]], who arrived in Hebron from Safed at the time of the Turkish invasion in 1841. Under his leadership the community flourished. He died in 1893 at the age of 116. In 1870, with the help of wealthy patrons from Kushte and under the leadership of Haim Israel Romano, the Jews purchased property outside the ghetto.
The first World War saw a weakening of the community, due to the enforced draft of Jews for the Turkish army. Under British rule the community returned but in fewer numbers than before. In 1923 there were approximately 420 people and 5 yeshivot in Hebron.
Following the war the flickering of nationalist flames began to spread encouraged by the British. August 23-24 1929, anti-Jewish riots broke out. The British were asked to intervene but refused. Sixty-seven people, mostly young students, were murdered. Sixty more were wounded.
See poster http://wzo.org.il/juice/map/hebron/index.html
Although there were cases of Arabs who defended their Jewish tenants, many were either passive or took part in the massacre. Synagogues were burned and the quarter ransacked. The riot stopped when a passing British officer fearing for his life, fired a single shot into the air - the crowd dispersed. This should be the end of the story but scant two years later 35 families moved back into what remained of the Jewish quarter. On April 23 1936, after further riots, the British Government decided to move all Jews out of Hebron "to prevent another massacre". One Jew, an expert cheese maker by the name of Yaakov Ezra, refused to go. He remained in Hebron until Nov 30 1947, when the United Nations partitioned the country.
Questions for further research and discussion:
1. How does the geographic location of a chosen capital affect the political atmosphere of a region? Refer to King David and the eventual split between the Kingdoms of Judah (South) and Israel (North).
2. What impact does the conversion of a Biblical Jewish location to a Christian or Moslem sites have on the socio-political climate of the area?
3. What is it about a gravesite (and specifically, this Tomb of the Patriarchs) in Judaism that has the ability to attract an almost continuous Jewish presence in Hebron since the time of the Patriarchs? (The Jewish presence in Hebron surpasses that of any other city including Jerusalem.)
References:
Bible and Biblical Commentaries
Classical Talmudic Sources and Commentaries
Avishar, Oded, The Book of Hebron(Hebrew) (1970) Keter Publishing, Israel.
Baron, Salo, Social and Religious History of the Jews
Flavius, Josephus, The War of the Jews
Marcus, Amit The Mountains of Hebron (Hebrew) Maariv Publications, Israel.
Orni and Efrat, Geography in Israel. IUP 1973
Wilson, Sir Charles The Land of Judea, Ariel Jerusalem
Description of Classical Jewish Sources:
The Bible: is divided into three parts - Torah (Pentateuch or five Books of Moses); Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Hagiogripha). Most of the story of David is taken from Samuel II, which is the fourth book of Nevi'im.
Biblical Commentaries:
Rashi (Rabbi Solomon Bar Isaac) 11th century Troyes, France - Probably the most celebrated commentator on the Bible and Talmud. His commentaries are indispensable tools, known for their succinctness and clarity.
RADAK (Rabbi David Kimchi) 13th century Narbonne France - Biblical commentator and grammarian. Philosophically he followed the rationalist ideas of Maimonides.
Talmud - (Mishna and Gemarah) - A vast collection of legal, literary and legendary discussion by hundreds of sages which was passed down from generation to generation and thus is known as the Oral Law. It is divided into various Tractates. Two versions of the Talmud are in existence, the Babylonian and the Jerusalem.
The War of the Jews - by Josephus. (1st Century CE) This is a remarkable historical record seen through the eyes of a former general of the Galilee who decided to join with the Romans and who described the Great revolt in all its agony and glory.
Midrash Rabba - a large conglomeration of ideas, quotations, legends and homilies based on the Torah and the 5 megillot (Esther, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Lamentations). Much of it was composed between the fourth and the ninth Century.
Zohar - A collection of mystical writing attributed to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (2nd Century CE), although many modern scholars claim that it was actually written in the 13th century by Rabbi Moses de Leon. The Zohar (meaning "splendor") is the basis of the Kabalah - Jewish mysticism.
1
Encyclopedia Judaica
April 05, 2006
Encyclopaedia Judaica [computer file].
CD-ROM ed., Version 1.0. Shaker Heights, Ohio : Judaica Multimedia, c1997.
A History of Hebron (from: Encyclopedia Judaica)
HEBRON (Heb. Chevron; Ar. al-Khalil), city in Erez Israel, 19 mi. (32km.) S. of Jerusalem in the Judean Hills, 3,050 ft.(930m.) above sea level. The name Hebron is explained as deriving from the root hbr (friend), the name *Habiru, or the Arabic word haber ("granary"). In the Bible, Hebron is also referred to as Kiriath Arba: "Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-Arba; this Arba was the greatest among the Anakim..." (Josh. 14:15; see *Anak, Anakim; *Ahiman, Sheshai, Talmai). B. Mazar maintains that the name Kiriath-Arba implies that the city was a member of four arba) neighboring confederated settlements in which the families of *Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre resided around the citadel of Hebron.
Biblical Period. Canaanite Hebron was located to the south of modern Hebron, on the strategic hill known as Jebel al-Rumayda, which was also the site of the later Israelite city. Numbers 13:22 states that Hebron was founded seven years before *Zoan, the capital of the Hyksos which was founded in about 1720 B.C.E. (cf. Jos., Wars, 4:530). Artifacts from this period--the middle Bronze Age--were found in a tomb in Wadi al-Tutah; these included pottery, alabaster objects, and personal articles. At this time the name Hebron is connected with the Patriarchs, especially the purchase of the Cave of *Machpelah by Abraham from *Ephron the Hittite. Hebron, however, remained a Canaanite city; it was one of the important localities visited by the 12 spies (Num. 13:22). Hoham, the king of Hebron (Josh. 10:3), participated in the Battle of Aijalon against Joshua and was defeated there together with the other kings of Canaan. His city was conquered by Caleb son of Jephunneh (Josh. 15:13; Judg. 1: 20).
After the death of Saul, David chose Hebron as his royal city and was anointed there as king over Judah (11 Sam. 2:1-4). In addition, Abner was buried there (3:32)--his traditional tomb is still standing. The assassins of *IshBosheth, the son of Saul, brought Ish-Bosheth's head to David in Hebron, and he ordered that they be hanged next to the pool in the town (4:1 2). Eventually David was anointed king over all Israel in Hebron (5:1-3). The city was also one of the *levitical cities and a *city of refuge (Josh. 21: 13; I Chron. 6:42); it was an important administrative center and this was the reason why Rehoboam fortified it (ll Chron. 11:10). In the division of Judah into districts during the Monarchy (cf. Josh. 15: 54) Hebron was a city of the mountain district.
Post-Biblical Period. After the destruction of the First Temple the Jewish inhabitants of Hebron were exiled and their place was taken by Edomites, whose border extended to Beth-Zur. According to Nehemiah 11: 25, however, there were still some Jewish families living in the town; nevertheless, the Jews of Hebron did not participate in the construction of the walls of Jerusalem. In 1 Maccabees 5:65 it is stated that Edomite Hebron was attacked by Judah Maccabee and its towers set on fire; the incorporation of the town into Judah, however, only took place after the conquest of Idumea by John Hyrcanus at the end of the second century B.C.E. With the conversion of the Idumeans, Hebron again became a Jewish city. King Herod built the wall which still surrounds the Cave of Machpelah. During the first war against the Romans. Hebron was conquered by Simeon Bar Giora, the leader of the Zealots (Jos., Wars, 4: 529), and the city was plundered: it was later burned down by the Roman commander Cerealius (Jos., Wars, 4:554), but the Jews continued to live there. It appears that the population did not suffer during the Bar Kochba revolt. There are remains in the city of a synagogue from the Byzantine period. It was during this period that a church was erected over the Cave of Machpelah: the "very large village" of Hebron then formed part (together with the Botna fortress to the north) of the fortified southern border of the country. [M.A.-Y.] Arab Conquest. It appears that Hebron fell to the Arabs without offering resistance. The Arabs, who honored the memory of Abraham, named the city Khahl al-Rahman ("the beloved [i.e., Abraham] of [God] the Merciful"), or simply al-Khalil; however, the name Habra or Habran is also found in Arabic sources. The first period of Arab conquest (638-1100) was a relief for the Jews of Hebron, as for the other Jews of Palestine, after the cruel Byzantine rule. There is, however, not much evidence about this period, but as more evidence is uncovered it becomes increasingly more probable that there was a permanent settlement in Hebron at that time. The testimony of historians from an earlier period and documents discovered in the course of time in the Genizah give a fairly clear picture of the continuity of the Jewish settlement in Hebron. The first evidence is provided by the story which appears in several versions in both Muslim and Christian sources, which tells of the permission *Omar gave to the Jews to build a synagogue near the cave of Machpelah, as well as a cemetery. The popularity of this story indicates that it has a nucleus of historical truth at least. The Arabs converted the Byzantine church over the cave into a mosque. Under their rule the town grew, and the Arabs traded with the bedouins in the Negev and the people to the east of the Dead Sea. According to the tenth-century Arab geographer, Al-Muqaddasi, they also conducted a far reaching trade in fresh fruit. There is no real evidence about the nature and situation of the Jewish settlement in Hebron in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. However, there is evidence of the existence of a Karaite community there at the beginning of the 11th century (1001), and tangible evidence from later in that century about continuing Jewish settle ment. From inscriptions and fragments of documents from the Genizah it is possible to formulate a genealogical reconstruction for four to six generations of two Hebron families, from which it can be seen that the Jewish population was concentrated around the cave of Machpelah and that the synagogue was built near the cave. One of these two families held the inherited title he-haver le-kivrei avot, or anshei kivrei avot, and was in charge of maintaining the holy place. This even included the burying of the dead brought by Jews from near and far for burial close to the cave of Machpelah.
Crusader Rule. The crusader rule (1100-1260) brought a temporary end to the Jewish settlement in Hebron. In 1100 the Crusaders captured the city, turned the mosque and the adjoining synagogue into a church and monastery, and expelled the Jews. There was probably no Jewish settlement in Hebron after that time--at any rate, there is no mention of the existence of Jews in Hebron. Maimonides, who visited Hebron (1166), as well as Benjamin of Tudela (c. 1171), Pethahiah of Regensburg (1176), and Jacob b. Nethanel (second half of 12th century) make no mention of a Jewish settlement or of the existence of Jews in Hebron. It is possible that Jews began to settle again in Hebron toward the end of the period of crusader rule, and by the beginning of the 13th century (1210) mention is made of a Jewish dyer "and his group" in Hebron (cf. A. Yaari, Iggerot Erez Yisrael (1943), 7 83). Mamluk Rule. The Mamluks (1260-1517), who expelled the Crusaders finally from Palestine, made Hebron their district capital (c. 1260), at which time the Jewish settlement apparently began to be perceptibly renewed. Nahmanides, who immigrated to Palestine in 1267, wrote to his son that he could 'go to Hebron to dig a grave for himself there" (Yaari, op. cit., 84). Such an action would have been unthinkable had there not been a Jewish settlement in Hebron. It appears that the tolerant Muslim attitude toward the Jews which had existed in pre-Crusader times did not continue with the return of the Muslims to Palestine. In 1266 it was decreed that the Jews were not to enter the Cave of Machpelah, and this decree was strictly enforced until the 20th century. A Christian traveler who visited Hebron in the first half of the 14th century reported that "Christian and Jewish people are regarded by them [by the Muslims] as dogs, and they do not allow them to enter such a holy place" (cf. M. Ish-Shalom, Masei Nozerim le-Erez Yisrael (1965), 230). The prohibition is mentioned by both Meshullam of Volterra (1481) and Obadiah of Bertinoro (1488), who visited Hebron. They both recount that the Muslims "built a wall at the entrance of the cave, in which they made a small window through which the Jews pray." The number of the Jewswas also small at that time--20 households according to Meshullam and Obadiah of Bertinoro (A. Yaari, Masol Erez Yisrael, (1946) 68 69). Nevertheless, although the Jewish settlement in Hebron was small, it was considered as very important by the Jews. This is seen in evidence found in both Christian and Jewish sources. At the end of the 15th century Christian pilgrims report about a Jewish pilgrimage to Hebron: "the Jews recognize them [the graves of the Patriarchs] and hold them in great esteem . . . and make pilgrimage there [to Hebron] from Jerusalem and even from other countries..." (the traveler Martin Kabatnik (1492), in M. Ish-Shalom, op. cit., 242). Obadiah of Bertinoro wrote in one of his letters that "there is a tradition among all the people of the land that burial in Hebron is better than in Jerusalem" (Yaari, ibid.) The first evidence about spiritual and economic activity by the Jews of Hebron during the Mamluk period appears in the 14th century, but this is fragmentary, is derived from a single source, and is doubtful. R. Isaac Hilo from Larissa (Greece) reported in 1333 that the Jews were engaged in a prosperous trade in cotton, which they themselves wove and spun, and that they were also engaged in all types of glasswork. Some scholars maintain that the Venetian Jews who emigrated to Palestine after the Crusades introduced the art of glasswork to Hebron, but this is not certain (O. Avisar (ed.), Sefer Hevron, (1970), 89). R. Isaac Hilo of Larissa also reported about the spiritual activity of the Jews of Hebron, mentioning "an ancient synagogue [in Hebron] in which they prayed day and night." Some scholars doubt, however, whether this description stems from contemporary testimony or from hearsay
Ottoman Rule. A definite turn for the better in the situation of the Jews of Hebron occurred during the Ottoman period (1517-1917), which began in Palestine in 1517 . However, the Jews of Hebron did suffer misfortune and in this very year a great calamity befell the Jewish population of the town. In a parchment document, written at approximately the time of the event (1518), a man named Japheth b. Manasseh from Corfu tells about the attack by "Murad Bey, the deputy of the king and ruler in Jerusalem," on the Jews of Hebron. The results were very grave: many were killed, their property was plundered, and the remainder fled for their lives to "the land of Beirut." This same document also attests the stable situation of the Hebron community at that time. The very fact that the sultan's deputy took the trouble to have his armies plunder and loot Hebron in the hope of gaining wealth proves that the Jews of Hebron had considerable property. Furthermore, from the words in the same document "and they killed many people," it may be deduced that many Jews were there. The growth of the Jewish population of Hebron at the beginning of the 16th century is explained by the fact that some of those Jews who were expelled from Spain went to Hebron, probably contributing by their strength and wealth to the spiritual and material enrichment of the especially in the realm of spiritual leadership. This stems from the emergence of two phenomena of note in the second half of the 16th century: the rising power of the Hebron settlement, on the one hand, and the decline of Safed as a spiritual and economic center, on the other. The consolidation of the Hebron settlement took place in 1540 when Malkiel Ashkenazi settled in the town. This multifaceted personality, who combined spiritual and practical greatness, organized communal life in Hebron both practically and spiritually. Ashkenazi's first act was to buy the courtyard in which the Jews of Hebron lived. This courtyard, which was surrounded by the stone walls of tall buildings, provided the Jewish community of Hebron with a degree of security. Ashkenazi built some additional buildings in the same location as the well-known synagogue, which was named for Abraham the Patriarch. He also served as Hebron's first rabbi, and his legal decisions and customs were regarded by the Hebron community as irrevocable halakhot not only in his time but in subsequent genera tions as well. Toward the end of the 16th and at the beginning of the 17th centuries some of the most important kabbalists of Safed moved to Hebron. The most famous among these was Elijah de *Vidas, author of the well known moralistic work Reshit Hokhmah and a student of Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria, as well as Isaac Archa and Menahem b. Moses ha-Bavli, also disciples of Luria. The teachings of the Kabbalah and mysticism made a deep impres- sion on the spiritual life of Hebron, and a spirit of asceticism was widespread. Isaiah Horowitz tells about the custom in Hebron of castigation and flagellation (Ammud ha-Teshuvah, a commentary on the tractate Yoma), which is an eyewitness description of castigations and a process of atonement which includes lashing, wearing sackcloth, being dragged, and the symbolic performance of the four judicial executions. Kabbalah and asceticism were prevalent in Hebron for approximately 300 years, until the settlement of the *Habad Hasidim in the 19th century. Thus, the settlement in Hebron grew and became stabilized, although not from an economic aspect. The great majority of the population was economically dependent on continuous outside assistance, in the form of donations and contributions from abroad. The money came in two ways: donations which were sent directly to Palestine from abroad and contributions which were collected by emissaries who went abroad specifically for this purpose. Until the middle of the 17th century Hebron did not have its own emissaries; since the community was small and poor, it could not afford the large investment required for sending such an emissary abroad. Hebron was thus dependent on chance contributions from the Diaspora and on the general *halukkah among the four holy cities (Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias), from which Hebron received the smallest share (three parts out of 24). In the 16th century the charitable organiza tion known as Yahaz was established. This was a kind of united fund whose name was a combination of the first letters of Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed. It seems, however, that all these attempts did not greatly alleviate F Hebron's difficult economic situation. This can be seen in "Kol Kore" (1616), which proclaimed to the Diaspora the difficult situation of Hebron's Jews. A central factor in their troubles was the huge debt owed by the community to the ruling authorities as a result of various decrees. Characteristic of the situation is the legend which tells about a tyrannical governor who forced the community to pay him thousands of grushim (coins whose value was equivalent to the German thaler) by threatening to burn half of the town and sell the other half into slavery (A. M. Luncz, in O. Avisar (ed.), Sefer h'evron, 306). Nevertheless, in spite of the heavy tribulations, which included a plague, locusts, and harsh decrees by the authorities during the 17th century, the Jews of Hebron did not surrender their desire for spiritual survival. In the I middle of the 17th century (1659) the famous philanthropist from Amsterdam, R. Abraham Pereira, established the yeshivah Hesed le-Avraham in Hebron. Distinguished rabbis and hakhamim lived in Hebron at that time. The yeshivah Hesed le-Avraham was a primary factor in the creation of this spiritual prominence of Hebron. A difficult crisis befell the spiritual leadership of the town in the second half of the 17th century, after the visit of Shabbetai Zevi in 1663 on his way to Egypt. His visit made a great impression on the community. His disciples related that the people of Hebron stayed awake the entire night in order to see his wondrous deeds. He gained the adulation of the most important rabbis of Hebron, some of whom, as well as their descendants, maintained their faith in him even after his conversion. People like the kabbalist Abraham Conki and the emissary Meir ha-Rofe, and especially Nehemiah Hayon, devotedthemselves to Shabbateanism. The Shabbatean crisis had a very adverse effect on Hebron and led to both its spiritual and economic decline. There was no improvement during the 18th century, which was marked by disease, decrees of expulsion, a blood libel, and upheavals during the rebellion of Ali Bey and the Russo-Turkish War. Despite these troubles, there was a certain increase in population as a result of the breakdown of the Jewish settlement of Jerusalem in 1721 and the immigration of Abraham Gershon of Kutow (Kuty), the brother-in-law of Israel Baal Shem Tov. Abraham Gershon relates that in the single Jewish courtyard there was so little room that they could not even let him bring his family. In the beginning of the 19th century the Hebron settlement gained some relief. In 1807 and 1811 the Jews bought and leased over 800 dunams of land. Nor was there stagnation in the spiritual life. First and foremost among the chkhamim of Hebron in the second half of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries was Hayyim Joseph David Azulai (called Hida). Mention should also be made of R. Mordecai Rubio, the rabbi of Hebron and rosh yeshivah of Hesed le-Avraham, and Raphael Hazzan, author of halakhic works. There was a distinct improvement from a financial point of view as well, notwithstanding the robbery and oppression perpetrated by the authorities. Financial help came from several sources. The philanthropist Simon Wertheimer established a large fund which regularly supported the poor of Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed. In 1814 Hayyim Baruch of Ostrava was appointed as the emissary of Hebron and he succeeded in organizing a network of funds which regularly provided Hebron with considerable amounts (O. Avisar op. cit., 131, 219). Sir Moses Montefiore, who visited Hebron in 1839 and was impressed with its beauty, also made generous contributions to the town. There is even evidence of independent economic progress made by the Jews of Hebron toward the second half of the 19th century. There were Jews who dealt in wine (1838), crafts, and trade (1876 and after). The most significant development in the history of the Hebron settlement in the 19th century, however, was brought about by Habad Hasidim. The community was headed by Simon Menahem Haikin who moved from Safed in 1840. Internal life was well organized, an agreement was signed between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities (in 1830 and 1842), and a close relationship was maintained between them. In the middle of the 19th century Elijah *Mani founded several public institutions, including the bet ha-midrash Bet Yaakov, and reorganized the Sephardi *kolel in Hebron, freeing it from the administration of the Sephardi kolel of Jerusalem. He also revolutionized communal life by instituting a takkanah which stated that the kolel could subsidize only those actually engaged in studying the Torah. This step encour- aged many of the inhabitants to begin to work, thus leading to a greater productivity in Hebron's economic life. There was even a hospital in Hebron by 1895, and the Jewish population reached 1,500 bythe late 19th century. An important contribution to Hebron's spiritual life was made by Hayyim Hezekiah Medini, who founded a yeshivah for young people in Hebron. Four years previously (1900) R. Shalom Baer of Lubavich had established the yeshivah Torat Emet. Together with the religious education system, which reached the height of its development at the beginning of the 20th century, there was a parallel development in secular education, and in 1907 the German Hilfsverein set up the first school that included secular studies in its curriculum. Nevertheless, due to limited economic possibilities the Jewish population fell to 700 by 1910.
World War I and British Rule (1917-1948). The flourishing period of the Jewish settlement in Hebron came to an end in 1914, with the outbreak of World War 1. The young men were conscripted into the Turkish army, the channels of financial assistance were blocked, hunger and plagues created havoc among the populace, and the ghetto of Hebron was almost entirely emptied of its inhabitants after the closing of the kolelim in the town--except for the Sephardi kolel. The Hebron settlement underwent a grave depression. In 1918, however, when Hebron was captured by the British and World War I ended, the Jewish settlement began to recover. The education department of the Zionist organization established schools for boys and girls, as well as a kindergarten. The number of inhabitants was smaller than before the war (430 out of a total population of 16,000 in 1922) but their economic situation was stable. The spiritual situation, on the other hand, was poor--the yeshivot were impoverished and there were only 17 students. In 1925 the *Slobodka Yeshivah from Lithuania was established under the leadership of Rabbi M. M. Epstein, and the Jewish population rose to 700 in 1929 (out of a population of 18,000). The year 1929 dealt a heavy blow to the Jewish settlement with the killing of many of Hebron's Jews by Arab rioters. The assault was well planned and its aim was well defined: the elimination of the Jewish settlement of Hebron. The rioters did not spare women, children, or the aged; the British remained passive. Sixty-seven were killed, 60 wounded, the community was destroyed, synagogues razed, and Torah scrolls burned. However, those who remained did not surrender and 35 families went to resettle in 1931. The community slowly began to rebuild itself, but everything was again destroyed in the upheavals of 1936. On the night of April 23, 1936, the British authorities evacuated the Jewish inhabitants of Hebron. The Jewish settlement of Hebron thus ended and only one inhabitant remained there until 1947. After 1948. In 1948 Hebron was incorporated into the kingdom of Jordan. It was captured by the Israel army in the Six-Day War of June 1967, and Jews again returned to visit Hebron. The old Jewish quarter was found destroyed and the Jewish cemetery almost obliterated. According to the 1967 census, conducted by Israel, Hebron had 38,309 inhabitants, all of whom (excepting 106 Christians) were Muslim. Hebron has a smaller percentage of Palestinian Arab refugees than most other places of the West Bank.
On the eve of Passover 1968 a group of religious settlers went to reestablish the Jewish settlement. This new settlement encountered opposition both from the local Arabs and from official Israel sources as their move had not been authorized. The settlers had to fight for official recognition and the right to build a Jewish township in Hebron. In May 1968 the settlers were moved from their temporary quarters to the area occupied by the military government, thus acquiring the protection of the government but not the right to engage freely in economic activity. In 1970 the government decided to permit Jewish settlement in the town of Hebron and to build 250 housing units there. Through the influence of Hebron's mayor Muhammed Ali al-Ja'barg the town remained relatively quiet under the Israel military government, although in 1968 and 1969 attacks repeatedly occurred on Israel soldiers, visitors, and settlers. There were several attacks on Jews who came to pray at the cave of Machpelah, as well as arguments about the right to pray there.
Throughout most of its history Hebron's economy has been characterized by its position on the border of two regions--the farming area and the desert Therefore, it has served as a market place for the exchange of goods between the peasants and the bedouin shepherds. Even in the 1970s its economy was based principally on retail trade and on handicrafts such as pottery, glass blowing, and leather tanning. Hebron's built-up area, which expanded after 1948, extends mainly northward along the road leading to Bethlehem and Jerusalem and approaches the village of *Halhul. [E.O.]
Bibliography: O. Avisar (ed.), Sefer Hevron (1970); I.S. Horowitz, Erez-Yisrael u-Shekhenoteha (1923), 248-63: Z. Vilnay, Mazzevot ha-Kodesh be-Eretz-Yisrael (1963), 71-98; A. M. Luncz (ed.), Yerushalayim, 10 (1914), 304-10; I. Kaplan, Ir ha-Avot (1924); Ha-Va'ad le-Vinyan Hevron, Tazkirla-Congress ha-Ziyyoni... (1931); Y. E. Levanon, Yalkut Hevron (1937); M. Mani, Hevron ve-Gibboreha (1963); J. Braslavsky, in: Eretz Israel, 5 (1958), 221-3; idem, in: YMHEY, 10 (1943), 66 70; idem, Le-Heker Arzenu (1954), index; B. Z. Dinaburg, in: Zion (Me'assef), 2 (1927), 54-55; J. Pinkerfeld, in: YMHEY, 6 (1939), 61-65; A. Y. Shahrai, Hevron (1930); Sefer ha-Yishuv, I (1939), 40-42; 2 (1944), 6-9; S. Assaf, Mekorot u-Mehkarim be-~oledot Yisrael (1946), 43-49; A. Yaari, Masot Erez Yisrael (1945), index; idem, Iggerot Erez Israel, index; idem, Sheluhei, index; idem, in: Yerushalayim: Mehkerei Erez Yisrael, 4 (1953), 185-202; idem, in: Mahanayim, no. 72 (1962), 84-96; N. H. Torczyner, in: E. L. Sukenik and 1. Press (eds.), Yerushalayim: . . . Le-Zekher Avraham Moshe Luncz (1928), 109-10; M. Ish-Shalom, Masei Nozerim le-Erez Yisrael (1965), index; Press, Erez, 2 (1948), 244 6; M. Benayahu, in: Sura, 2 (1955-56), 219-23; N. Fried, in; Sinai, 53 (1963), 108-111; Prawer, Zalbanim, 2 (1963), index; M. D. Gaon, Yehudei ha-Mizrah be-Erez Yisrael, I (1928), 177-94; 1. Ben Zvi, She'ar Yashuv (1966), index; idem, Erez-Yisrael ve-Yishuvah... (1967), index; idem, in: YMHEY, 5 (1937), 119-23; B. Meisler, in: Sefer Dinaburg ( 1949), 310-25; L H . Vincent, E. J . H . Mackay and F. M. Abel, Hebron. Le Haram el-Khalll (1923); Abel, Geog, 2 (1938), 345-7; G. L. Strange, Palestine under the Moslems (1890), 309ff.
[edit] Halim Barakat
I looked at the Halim Barakat piece from his blog and the MEMRI dispatch which includes translation of an article he published in an Al-Hayat. It is a very fascinating and complex piece and I really enjoyed reading it--if anyone hasn't read it I would really recommend it.
Here's what we have now in the "Accuracy" section of the article:
Professor Halim Barakat of Georgetown University wrote that MEMRI had mistranslated an article in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, changing "Zionists" to "Jews" and "Zionist leadership" to "Israeli Jews" and had taken sections of the article out of context.
Here's the passage this came from on the HB blog:
"This is followed by a series of excerpts taken out of context and translated in such a way as to intentionally misrepresent my views, such as attributing to me personally the above quotes from the new York Times article. Another example is replacing the words "Zionists" with "Jews" and the "Zionist Leadership" with "[Israeli Jews]." This has the effect of erasing a distinction between Judaism as a religion and Zionism as a political movement , hence the impossibility of criticizing Israel without being exposed to the risk of being branded as an anti-Semite."
This is problematic as criticism, because it is not very specific. We can't judge the misattribution of quote thing at all, but he does say he was thinking along the same lines as the NY Times piece so it wouldn't seem to be a distortion of views.
As for the word substitutions, the MEMRI translation is full of the use of the word "Zionist" and of the many uses of the word "Jew", all but one look completely legit. After a careful read (see below) I think that he is talking about one substitution of "Jew" for "Zionist" only. The substitution of "[Israeli Jews]" for "Zionist Leadership" seems inadvertent. In spite of the (probably very minor) word substitution, reading the MEMRI translation, I did have a clear sense tht HB was criticizing Israel, rather than saying anything antisemetic or antijewish.
Finally, in HB's Web article about the translation, he outlines the two main points of his article:
"The first question I raised concerned the mutation of the state in the Arab world from a representative body into an instrument of repression. Instead of the state acting as a servant of the people, the people have become the servants of the state. Political alienation in this sense is represented in the loss of control by Arab societies over a system they created to serve their needs and aspirations; hence, the crisis of civil society which I discussed in several of my writings."
MEMRI seems to get this ok in their translation:
"...a chasm has opened between the Arabs and their rulers....Since the Arabs won independence, the [Arab] state… has become a means of oppression. The people serve the state, but the state does not serve the people. The rulers, who were meant to represent the people and to work to achieve their goals and aspirations, have become a force of repression, stripping their life from them. Since the mid-20th century, the Arabs have suffered double humiliation, both domestic and external…"
HB describes his second point as follows; "how did it come to pass that Zionism, which began in the 19th century as a political movement reacting against growing anti-semitism in Europe, gave rise to a state that is destroying and prosecuting another society, that of the Palestinian people.
Reading the MEMRI exerpts, HM's points seem to be well expressed there (I won't detail but here is the link).
In sum, I don't know what to do with this criticism. It is from a blog, and therfore probably shouldn't be here by Wiki standards WP:CITE (although we have allowed other personal blogs written by academics). It is not specific enough to be really helpful, and after examining the translation and the article about the translation, it really looks like HB is overstating the extent to which there was any distortion of his views. I think we need to throw it out.
DETAILS:
- I went to the MEMRI translation of the article expecting NOT to find the word "zionist" or "zionism" anywhere in the translation (ie--all instances of this word use in HM's orig article substituted, but it these words appear many times. If anyone cares, here they all are:
"The Wild Beast that Zionism Created: Self-Destruction," "How have Judaism, the Jews, and the international forces all permitted Zionism to become a wild, destructive beast" "Zionism arose as a result of the persecution of the Jews in Europe. "The rabbis of Judaism breathed life into the clay statue, and Zionism arose, an arrogant power that destroyed Palestinian society and the Palestinian people that was completely unconnected to the Jews' original tragedy – and all in the name of saving the Jews." "Then, Zionism breathed life into the clay statue and it turned into a military state, armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction. The Zionists Do Not Raise Their Children to be Weak and Human "Like the Golem, so are the leaders of Zionism in this time: Their goals justify their means; they do not serve God, but an avenging God. They do not raise the younger generations [to be] human and weak Jews who respect the rights of others and are partners in human civilization. [They raise them to be] the strong Jew who avenges by destroying himself as he destroys others…"
- Most of the times that MEMRI uses the word "Jew" in the translation, it seems as if this might be how HM originally wrote it because substituting "Zionist" makes the sentence read like nonsense. Here are all the sentences in TRANSLATION where MEMRI uses "Jews" in situ (along with my notes doing word substitution)
: "How have Judaism, the Jews, and the international forces all permitted Zionism to become a wild, destructive beast" (elizmr note: if jew taken out and zionist substituted this would read, "how have judaism, the zionists, and the international forces all premited zionism.....--this seems weird) "A group of [American Jews] is planning to put on a play taken from a legend called 'The Golem,' which spread among the Jews of Europe several centuries ago." (elizmr note: seems LEGIT use of Jews) "The legend of the Golem, from 16th-century Prague, tells of a rabbi who breathed life into a clay statue in an attempt to create a savior for the Jews so that this savior would take revenge on their enemies. (elizmr note: seems LEGIT use of Jews) "Zionism arose as a result of the persecution of the Jews in Europe. (elizmr note: seems legit use of "Jews") "The rabbis of Judaism breathed life into the clay statue, and Zionism arose, an arrogant power that destroyed Palestinian society and the Palestinian people that was completely unconnected to the Jews' original tragedy – and all in the name of saving the Jews." (elizmr note: if word substitution done: the rabbis of Judaism breathed life into the clay statue and Zionism arose, an arrogant power that destroyed p society and the p eople and was completely uncommected to the Zionists orig trag all in the name of sayig the Zionists? ---sounds weird) "Like the Golem, so are the leaders of Zionism in this time: Their goals justify their means; they do not serve God, but an avenging God. They do not raise the younger generations [to be] human and weak Jews who respect the rights of others and are partners in human civilization. [They raise them to be] the strong Jew who avenges by destroying himself as he destroys others…" (elizmr: this last use of "Jew" must be what HM is objecting to)
- There is only one instance in which MEMRI uses "[Israeli Jews]" exactly as mentioned by HM:
."[The Israeli Jews] have turned into an instrument; their humanity has shriveled.
- Since this only occurs once, it must be what HM is referring to. The phrase "Israeli Jews" does occur right before MEMRI's use of the bracketed term "[Israeli Jews]" in the text. I don't think that HB is objecting to this use of the term, because he clearly puts brackets around the phrase in his Blog. Therefore, this use of "Israeli Jew" is probably ok. It looks like MEMRI is using "[Israeli Jew]" because they have left out a bit of text and need to add something to make the meaning clear. I would suspect that they used "Israeli Jew" because that had occured right before in HB's text, rather than to purpously paint HB as an antisemite.
The Israeli Jews are no longer strong in and of themselves; [they are strong] with the strength of their airplanes, missiles, tanks, armored vehicles, helicopters, and tractors that uproot trees and destroy homes. "[The Israeli Jews] have turned into an instrument; their humanity has shriveled.
[edit] point by point review
- TITLE: MEMRI translation "The Wild Beast that Zionism Created: Self-Destruction," HB does not say what the title of his article was
- DESCRIPTIONS: MEMRI description of HB: "Georgetown University professor of Palestinian origin, Halim Barakatf"; HB description of MEMRI: "propaganda organization dedicated to representing Arabs and Muslims as anti-semites"
- MAIN POINT ONE BY HB: "The first question I raised concerned the mutation of the state in the Arab world from a representative body into an instrument of repression. Instead of the state acting as a servant of the people, the people have become the servants of the state. Political alienation in this sense is represented in the loss of control by Arab societies over a system they created to serve their needs and aspirations; hence, the crisis of civil society which I discussed in several of my writings."; MEMRI version: "Since the Arabs won independence, the [Arab] state… has become a means of oppression. The people serve the state, but the state does not serve the people. The rulers, who were meant to represent the people and to work to achieve their goals and aspirations, have become a force of repression, stripping their life from them. …"
- MAIN POINT TWO BY HB:
The second question I addressed is this: how did it come to pass that Zionism, which began in the 19th century as a political movement reacting against growing anti-semitism in Europe, gave rise to a state that is destroying and prosecuting another society, that of the Palestinian people. In developing this theme, I relied on an article by Alisa Solomon published in the arts section of the New York Times on April 7, 2002 , titled "A Jewish Avenger, A Timely Legend."
- THESIS OF BLOG POSTING BY HB: Recently, I experienced first hand what it is to be on the receiving end of the ongoing campaign of intimidation against those who dare to publicly criticize the actions of the Israeli government...he had begun the article with:
Now, as in the past, the primary weapon used to silence open discussion on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the charge of anti-semitism, as if Zionism as a political movement is synonymous with Judaism as a religion. This campaign of intimidation escalated considerably after September 11 and has reached shrill proportions now that the leaders of Israel are facing world-wide condemnation for their attacks on Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps in the Occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
refs: http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP36902#_edn1 April 16, 2002 No.369 Georgetown University Professor, Halim Barakat: 'The Jews Have Lost Their Humanity'; 'They Do Not Raise Their Children to be Weak' In an article published in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat,[1]
http://www.halimbarakat.com/publications/articles/onmemri_1.html The Story of An Article By Halim Barakat
[edit] Gallup
Email debate: Yigal Carmon and Brian WhitakerAn article on Guardian Unlimited last year by Middle East editor Brian Whitaker questioned the impartiality of Memri, an organisation that translates articles from the Middle Eastern media. We subsequently published a response by Memri's president Yigal Carmon, in which he vigorously defended his organisation. What follows is the text of a debate between the two men conducted subsequently by email. At the end of this exchange you will find links to the original articles that gave rise to the debate.
Tuesday January 28, 2003
Brian Whitaker
let me ask you about a statement you made in your testimony to the US Congress on April 18.
Citing claims in the Arab media that the September 11 attacks "were the work of the United States government itself and/or a Jewish conspiracy", you said: "Recent Gallup polls show a large majority of the Arab world continue to believe it." Please tell us the dates of those Gallup polls, the wording of the relevant questions, and their findings.
Yigal Carmon An example of your superfluous antagonism is the request for details such as "the dates, wording of the relevant questions and their findings", regarding the Gallup polls quoted in my testimony to the US Congress. I was referring to a major project, The 2002 Gallup Poll of the Islamic World, full details of which are available at www.gallup.com . Harold Evans, former editor of the Times, wrote recently, "millions and millions believe this rubbish, as a recent Gallup poll has found". I wonder if you would have questioned him so closely?
Brian WhitakerRegarding the "Gallup polls", you now admit that there was only one, though I'm sure the plural sounded more impressive in your evidence to Congress. But I am still baffled by your claim that this poll, published last February, found a large majority of Arabs who believed that the September 11 attacks "were the work of the United States government itself and/or a Jewish conspiracy".
Gallup's findings are no longer available on their website except to subscribers, but I have looked at several newspaper reports of the poll and can find nothing to substantiate your claim. Did you make it up? If not, please produce the evidence.
Yigal Carmon I am the one to be "baffled" by your quibbles over the Gallup polls singular or plural. Gallup interviewed 10,000 people in depth and continues to update its surveys. If you find it easier to accuse Memri of "making it up" than for your newspaper to fork out $90 [£55] to access valuable information, then I am sorry you aren't taking this debate more seriously - or courteously.As one who has been invited to give testimony before the US Congress on a number of occasions, I have no need to "impress" them, and certainly no cause to change or embellish evidence.
I am even more "baffled" that you apparently fail to acknowledge the widespread belief in the Arab world that the US itself and/or the Jews perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. A wealth of evidence of such belief is freely available as this issue has been discussed throughout the world, from the New York Times to Al-Jazeera and from the Hindustani Times to Al Riyadh.
Brian WhitakerOnce again, I must return to the deeply troubling question of the Gallup poll - which you shrug off with a facetious suggestion about spending $90 on the report.
The fact is that you gave evidence to Congress claiming that Gallup had found "a large majority of the Arab world" who believed the September 11 attacks "were the work of the United States government itself and/or a Jewish conspiracy". What you said is untrue, and Gallup has confirmed that. I trust you will now apologise to Congress for your false testimony.
news stories confirming carmon's version: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/60II/main520768.shtml CBS News Web site The Big Lie September 4, 2002http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002/02/27/usat-poll.htm Many in Islamic world doubt Arabs behind 9/11 Andrea Stone, USA TODAY 2/27/2002 also: http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002/02/27/usat-pollresults.htm same date
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1843838.stm Wednesday, 27 February, 2002, 13:16 GMT Poll says Muslims angry at US
http://poll.gallup.com/content/?ci=18127 The 2002 Gallup Poll of the Islamic World: Subscriber Report Gallup Poll Editors
http://poll.gallup.com/content/default.aspx?ci=10000 The 2002 Gallup Poll of the Islamic World The first and only nationally representative, publicly available, survey of nine predominantly Islamic nations on their residents' views about the West
