File Under Chutzpah

By Stephen Pollard August 26, 2009

Stephen Walt, of 'Walt and Mearsheime Israel Lobby' fame, has done more than most people on the planet to make Israel-baiting a mass sport. And it's that atmosphere which has led to the explosion in demands for a boycott.

So you wouldn't expect to read this at the end of a long post on his blog singing the praises of Neve Gordon, the Israeli academic who last week called for a boycott:

I might add that I dont support the "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
Movement" myself. This is partly because I'm uncomfortable with even
mild forms of collective punishment and partly because, like Gordon
himself, I do worry about the double-standard issue (i.e., if you think
it's ok to boycott Israel, why not China or Burma or any number of
other countries?). And I'm especially leery of efforts to interfere
with academic exchanges, because I don't like anything that interferes
with free speech or obstructs the free flow of ideas. But I respect
Gordon's motives and his op-ed did make me wonder: what if he's correct
and this is in fact the only way to get a two-state solution? Making
people think is something scholars are supposed to do, right?

So after spending years spewing out bile and giving spurious academic legitimacy to traditional lies about those manipulative, secretive Israelis running US foreign policy, he casually mentions that he doesn't actually support the genie he has let out of the bottle.

Chutzpah is being kind. I can think of other words to use.