Stormfront Material from Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad

[shira]

In one of his recent columns for Al Jazeera, Columbia University professor Joseph Massad holds forth on the topic of “Israel and the politics of boycott.” He casually claims in this piece that “the Zionists…were pioneers in their use of boycotts to effect racial separatism,” while “the Nazis would be latecomers to the tactic.” In other words, the Nazis were just imitating “the Zionists”… No doubt the politically correct thing to do is to regard Professor Massad as just another Israel “critic.” But one of Massad’s older Al Jazeera columns offers an excellent example of the professor’s methods and the kind of “intellectual” company he gets to keep as a result.

Some two years ago, Massad penned a bitter complaint about the contrast between a supposed western indifference to any suffering by Arab/Palestinian children and an eagerness to sympathize when Jewish children are in danger. Reflecting his obsessive hatred of Zionism, Massad devoted one section of his article to “Zionism and Jewish children,” where he claimed that “Zionism did not always show similar love towards Jewish children, whom it never flinched from sacrificing for its colonial goals.”

The “evidence” Massad produced to support his vicious claim is a quote of David Ben-Gurion, who, according to Massad, rejected a generous British offer to take a few thousand Jewish children from Germany to Britain in the wake of the so-called “Kristallnacht”-pogroms in November 1938. The quote reads:

“If I knew it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel), then I would opt for the second alternative, for we must weigh not only the life of these children but also the history of the people of Israel.”

As noted in a relevant section on “Ben Gurion and the Holocaust” in a longer post by CAMERA, “so-called ‘post-Zionists’ and anti-Zionist radicals” love to insinuate that the Zionists happily collaborated with the Nazis in order to promote immigration to Palestine irrespective of overall Jewish interests and the survival of Europe’s Jews.

But in late 1938, it was already clear that precious few countries were willing to take in Jewish refugees. Indeed, Germany’s Nazi government gloated in the wake of the Evian Conference in the summer of 1938 “how ‘astounding’ it was that foreign countries criticized Germany for their treatment of the Jews, but none of them wanted to open the doors to them.” That is the context for the Ben Gurion quote presented by Massad – but of course, Massad prefers to ignore this context. (And needless to say, his interest in the rescue of Jewish children from the Nazis doesn’t include the Jewish children whose rescue was sabotaged by the Palestinian leader who became notorious as “Hitler’s mufti.”)

more...
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/05/03/stormfront-material-from-columbia-university-professor-joseph-massad/

[shira]

1. Tenure Track Bigotry

A tenured Columbia University professor is facing criticism for claiming in a column published Tuesday by Al Jazeera that Zionism is anti-Semitic and that the Jewish people who opposed Zionism and Israel died in the Holocaust, a notion that critics deemed anti-Semitic.

Columbia Arab politics professor Joseph Massad wrote that the Nazis successfully “killed the majority of Jewish enemies of Zionism,” or those Jews who might oppose Israel today.

“While the majority of Jews continued to resist the anti-Semitic basis of Zionism and its alliances with anti-Semites, the Nazi genocide not only killed 90 percent of European Jews, but in the process also killed the majority of Jewish enemies of Zionism who died precisely because they refused to heed the Zionist call of abandoning their countries and homes,” Massad wrote, before discussing “the affinity between Nazis and Zionists.”

http://freebeacon.com/tenure-track-bigotry/

In other words, the only good (anti-zionist) Jews were killed by the Nazis. Massad doesn't hate all Jews; just the ones who weren't killed in the Holocaust.

[shira]

2. Max Blumenthal - apologist for Massad's StormFront Zionism = Naziism

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/335841506831265792

[aranthus]

3. Not surprising.

Not any of it.

[oberliner]

4. Al Jazeera management orders Joseph Massad article pulled in act of pro-Israel censorship

In an unprecedented act of political censorship Al Jazeera English has deleted an article by noted Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad after coming under intense criticism from Zionists in recent days.

Massad told The Electronic Intifada that he had “received confirmation” from his editor at Al Jazeera English that “management pulled the article.” The Electronic Intifada was able to independently confirm that the article was pulled.

The piece, “The Last of the Semites,” published on 14 May, was taken down from the main Al Jazeera English site this morning – the link now redirects to Al Jazeera’s main page. It has also disappeared from Massad’s personal page on the Al Jazeera website.

The article had been one of the most viewed and emailed articles on the site and had been tweeted hundreds of times.

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/al-jazeera-management-orders-joseph-massad-article-pulled-act-pro-israel

[delrem]

5. good decision.

I read the article and it was clear that the author had gone off the rails.

[oberliner]

11. Sadly, under pressure, they reversed the decision

Very disappointing.

[delrem]

12. Why disappointing? Doesn't this show that Al Jazeera gave the matter consideration?

My guess is that Al Jazeera decided that this wasn't something of the Greta Berlin kind.

Recall that Al Jazeera is desperate now that it's forced to toe a line drawn by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, drawn in terms of how the good Sheikh is funding a proxy war. This is one news agency that's getting squeezed.

Do you think that Joseph Massad should be silenced?

[shira]

14. Make up your mind. First you say it was a good decision....

....for al-Jazeera to take down the article and now you hold the opposite view.

Why did you change your mind?

[delrem]

17. Perhaps you should learn a lesson on about how "minds" work.

To my mind it was a good decision to take the article down, and a good decision to put the article back up.
That's according as I read the situation, of course.

I still think the author of the article "went off the rails".
I do think the author writes about volatile material, and that the author is targeted.
I don't agree with activities meant solely to silence him.
That, to me, is from the blackside. Kay?

I do know that after reading the author's article I was instantly apprised of rebuttals. I think these rebuttals deserve to stand, but they can't stand except in rebuttal to an openly available source.

[oberliner]

15. "I read the article and it was clear that the author had gone off the rails."

Was that not you who posted that comment?

[shira]

16. And just like that, gutter antisemitism posing as mere antizionism...

...is legitimate.

And people wonder why antizionism = antisemitism posing as Palestinian human rights activism.

[shira]

6. Nice to see al-Jazeera under Zionist control these days.

Our plan is working...

MUHUHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

[oberliner]

7. Electronic Intifada seems weirdly inconsistent here

They went out of their way to distance themselves from Greta Berlin for her comments but they don't have a problem with Joseph Massad's.

Any theories as to why that is?

[shira]

9. There's nothing rational about Jew hate. n/t

[shira]

8. Al Jazeera re-publishes Massad screed. Lobby fails!!!

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/2013521184814703958.html

[oberliner]

10. The power of the Palestine Lobby is unsurmountable

Creates a "chilling effect" for anyone who disagrees with them.

Even a disgusting, vile, clearly antisemitic article like this one cannot be prevented from publication.

Ali Abuminah has too much power and must be stopped.

[delrem]

13. "The power of the Palestine Lobby is unsurmountable."

"insurmountable", according as my spellchecker.

This is comedy, right?