Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Professors Strike Back

Yehuda Bauer, writing in Haaretz Nov. 19th, (Hebrew only, and already hidden behind their paywall) enumerates various democratic nation states with large minorities: The Latvians, for example, make up only 59.4% of the population in their nation state (Russians are 27.5%, only 56% of those Russians are Latvian citizens). Estonians make up 69% of their own nation state, while 25.6% are Russians. Kazakhs make up 63% of the population of their nation state, and the lack of democracy there isn't a matter of ethnicity - the country is equally undemocratic for all.

Menachem Lorberbaum and Carlo Strenger, both of Tel Aviv University, likewise take aim at the notion that the Jews can't have a nation state with a Palestinian minority, though near the end they also criticize the direction Israel's right is going. But that's fine. The point isn't that left-leaning professors - as these three all are - need to support Lieberman, rather that prominent left-leaning professors are still more critical of the ideas coming from the far left.

1 comment:

L. King said...

One should also note that the legitimacy of Russians in these states (or Chinese in Tibet) never gets brought up as an issue of the 4th Geneva convention, confirming th e original purpose - that it apply to the forced resettling of citizens outside one's national borders.