Monday, July 26, 2010

Professor: The Jews Are at the Center of All Creation

Juan Cole hosts a colleague of his, one Prof. Farhang Jahanpour, an Iranian scholar who teaches at Oxford. It's a long article, some of its content is plausible, some less so, and much of it deals with things I know less about than the professor. The reason I find it worthy of record is its beginning: We're ten years after the Camp David negotiations, and their failure doomed the world to its present turmoil:

... However, the deal broke down over the issue of Jerusalem as the result of Israel’s insistence that it was the “eternal, undivided capital of Israel”. If agreement had been reached at that summit, the history of the past ten years would have been completely different from what it has been. The Israelis and Palestinians would have experienced a decade of peace and security. We would not be talking about the presumed danger of an Iranian nuclear programme, or the estrangement between Turkey and Israel, and we probably would not have witnessed the terrible events of 9/11or the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, the world is going through very difficult times at present. The global economic recession, which according to the Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman could yet go through a double dip recession or even a depression,2 the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict, and the scourge of international terrorism have produced a situation more dangerous than at any time since the Second World War. All these events are fuelling extremism on both sides. On the one hand, the Israelis are talking of the existential threat that they face from a future Iranian nuclear bomb, and on the other hand we hear talk of a Zionist conspiracy and a Jewish-Christian crusade against the Muslims.

It seems to me a reasonable person reading those two paragraphs will understand them as a saying that Israeli intransigence about Jerusalem caused the negotiations to fail, and as a result the Iranians are trying to develop nuclear weapons; also, absent the failure 9/11 wouldn't have happened, the recession wouldn't have happened, there wouldn't be wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or bloodshed in Pakistan Somalia and Yemen, nor would there be terrorism or extremism.

That's what the professor is saying, isn't it?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

whatever causes these what-if-ranters to indulge in "free association" must be powerful stuff

if one takes any absolutely minor event of one's daily life, changes a minute detail and then follows the thing through the deviation caused thereby one has performed the one experiment that immunizes one to these delusionists once and for all. Or if you take a parallel track and nudge one of the two the nanoest of a millimeter to the side what will you see some miles further down?

What if may be a nice party game if the conversation is lagging but never ever play it with anything serious.

Silke

Michael said...

The professor could have said that Arafat's desire to preserve his victim status was the cause of all these current woes. That wouldn't make sense, of course, since that would mean it wasn't the fault of the Jews.

Anonymous said...

OT but related:

"WikiLeaks gave the New York Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel access to the archive several weeks ago."

I'd love to know how much these outfits paid for the "privilege" ...

The Atlantic's writer of course thinks it's all for the good, that Wikileaks is now a somebody thanks to one or several kids who ratted on their country's military.

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/07/wikileaks-may-have-just-changed-the-media-too/60377/

Popper is probably beyond me but surely that can't have been what he meant by "Open Society"

Silke

Barry Meislin said...

However, the deal broke down over the issue of Jerusalem as the result of Israel’s insistence that it was the “eternal, undivided capital of Israel”.

It is all so very simple.

But does this mean that the good professor is claiming that Arafat was willing to compromise on the other two Palestinian demands?: Return to the May 1967 cease-fire lines and repatriation of Palestinian refugees to within pre 1967-Israel?

(If so, why doesn't anyone seem to know about it? Including Abbas, who's been making the same demands as Arafat....)

And does the good professor mean to say that the sagacious Arafat, knowing far in advance that Israel would not agree to his demands, stockpiled massive quantities of explosives and weapons in preparation for the intifada that would have necessarily had to erupt?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Empress Trudy said...

Don Juan John Cole does not mean that. He means the Jews are the root of all evil.

Anonymous said...

"All these events are fuelling extremism on both sides. On the one hand, the Israelis are talking of the existential threat that they face from a future Iranian nuclear bomb, and on the other hand we hear talk of a Zionist conspiracy and a Jewish-Christian crusade against the Muslims."

Except that the Muslim fears are largely imaginary, while the Iranian threat is all too real.

Lisa

Morey Altman said...

He forgot the New Coke fiasco and the recent death of a baby panda at the Beijing Zoo. But, otherwise, of course he's spot-on.

Sérgio said...

What a scholar, this guy, able to find such deep connection of unrelated events. He should receive the first 'Octopus Paul Award' for being such a visionary intellectual molusk.

On a more serious discussion: I am reading the interesting book "Post-zionism, Post-holocaust: three essays on denial, forgetting and delegitimation of Israel" by Elhanan Akira. Interesting analysis of left wing intellectual perversions.

kai said...

The strangest thing is not, to combine unrelated events but the usual anti-Jewish way of turning the truth upside-down. Camp David couldn't fail due to Israeli insistence on the eternal undivided capital, exactly because Ehud Barak offered to divide Jerusalem!

But the professor proves another theorem about anti-semitism: one can easily be a high-profile intellectual (and capable of some remarkable achievements) while at the same time being a complete idiot when it comes to matters about Jews.

My theory: there must be a certain brain region for this specific disease. Would be an interesting field of research.

Sérgio said...

Agreed. Sane people call it delusion, while postmodernists say it is creativity.

It´s a brain region, close to emotional centers which gets damaged somehow. Voilá, a brand new field of science is created: Neuropathologicantisemitism.