Jack Johnson, Jabotinsky, and Beinart's identity crisis

An absolutely fascinating piece from Rick Richman, The Crisis of Peter Beinart, can be found in the NY Sun of March 24th:

One of the most stunning error/omissions — it falls in both categories — is Mr. Beinart’s mistaken reliance on a 1910 essay by Vladimir Jabotinsky, which Mr. Beinart used to support his theory that “the reason is simple” why Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t trust Barack Obama (whom Mr. Beinart calls “the Jewish President”): “Obama reminds Netanyahu what Netanyahu doesn’t like about Jews”:

Understanding what Netanyahu doesn’t like about Jews requires understanding what Vladimir Jabotinsky didn’t like about Jews. … What Jabotinsky didn’t like about Jews was their belief that they carried a moral message to the world. … “The Bible says ‘thou shalt not oppress a stranger; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt,’” wrote Jabotinsky in 1910. “Contemporary morality has no place for such childish humanism.

Mr. Beinart found the above quotation in a secondary source. It is unlikely he read Jabotinsky’s 12-page essay before using it as the crux of his analysis, because Mr. Beinart not only egregiously misstated the theme of the essay; he even misinterpreted the two-sentence quote.

Mr. Beinart might have liked the essay if he had read it. Understanding it requires understanding the aftermath of the July 4, 1910 heavyweight championship fight between Jack Johnson, the son of emancipated slaves who was defending his title, and Jim Jeffries, the former champion who had retired undefeated after refusing to fight black men, and who returned from retirement to, as he told the Los Angeles Times, “reclaim the heavyweight championship for the white race.”

Perhaps to use, a slightly different version of an overly misused Pres. Obama favorite, Mr. Beinart is punching well below his weight level. Rick Richman's piece, on the other hand, 1st rate scholarship, and engaging.

Continue to "The Crisis of Peter Beinart"

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page. Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand