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21 hours ago
Monday, 5 January 2009
THINGS A HISTORY PROFESSOR DOESN'T NEED TO KNOW
History, for example, else how to explain Juan Cole's long description of Israel's history.
I suppose I could write an entire book full of facts to refute his post, but I already have. I hope, for his students, that the professor is better informed about the things he teaches in his university courses, because what he has posted here is about as factual as you'd expect from an overly enthusiastic high-school junior with a blog. That's the factual part I'm talking about, statements such as
Hamas pursued the tactic of sending small home-made missiles against nearby Israeli towns, mainly Sderot, emulating what Hizbullah had been doing to the Israeli colony in the occupied Shebaa Farms in 2005-2006.
My italics. Do you think the professor can find that colony on the map? If so it would be quite a feat, since it's not there and never has been. Or how about
Egypt launched the 1973 war as a surprise attack, and used sophisticated underwater sand-moving equipment to get across the canal and penetrate into the Sinai.
Sounds sinister, doesn't it. Rubber boats, most decidedly on the surface, otherwise the Egyptian commandos would have drowned.
Then you get the conceptual parts of his lecture, which are by definition slippery because they're speculation, not fact. Still, even when merely ruminating, I do think one can expect more of a university professor than paragraphs such as this:
Israel's political tradition seeks expansion if possible; if not possible, it seeks a balance of power with its enemies. If that is not possible, it seeks to be held harmless from its avowed foes. If that is not possible, it is willing to wage total war to punish the enemy population until it accepts at least a cold peace.
Where necessary, Israel is willing to give up territorial expansion to get the cold peace.Set aside that the professor couldn't substantiate this paragraph even if he spent ten years in the appropriate archives (assuming he knew the language); just try to figure out the syntax of that paragraph, and if you wish, come back and tell me what it means.
I never studied at an American university, but I sure hope this fellow is a rotten apple, not your standard professor. Where I studied, an undergraduate seminar paper of this quality would have been thrown out.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
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