Trending? Academic Propaganda Against Israel Masquerading As Legit Scholarship - by Sheri Oz

...There is no other way to see this paper than as academic propaganda meant to fuel the anti-Israel BDS movement. Recognition that the entertainment/news media are propagating “fake news” makes it hard to know what news reports to believe. If the article under examination here is any indication, then it appears that academia is birthing a “fake scholarly writing” trend that will make it hard for students and anyone other than the expert to distinguish between truth and fiction in academic journals.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
24 August '17..

The biggest danger is that once this kind of irresponsible drivel is published, it is common for other academic papers to cite them as academic source materials. Israel bashing in scholastic publications, then, based on distortions of the truth grows more and more legitimate. Can anyone think that an article like this is anything other than academic propaganda for the purposes of the boycott-Israel machine?

* * * * *

I just discovered a new article published in International Relations and Diplomacy, an apparently semi-academic journal that may hope to qualify as an academic one, however it has not yet been rated against other journals.

Established in 2013, it appears to have a degree of legitimacy given that some of those listed as reviewers have positions in well recognized and respected universities. Reviewers are experts who are asked to read and evaluate the appropriateness of manuscripts submitted for potential publication. Reviewers can accept manuscripts as is or request specific changes in order to bring them to an acceptable standard, or can reject them outright. Closest to home is reviewer Prof Eyal Zisser, who serves as Vice Rector of Tel Aviv University and Chair of the Department of Contemporary History of the Middle East.

Prof Zisser likely did not review the paper I am critiquing here because his field of expertise does not include the topic covered in this article. Were he to have been asked to review it, I am sure that, as an Israeli, he would have identified some of the glaring distortions presented even if he agrees with the political stance of the author (and I have no idea about his political views). I hope that he would have insisted on correcting the errors as that is what would be expected of an honest academician. As a matter of fact, I hope he would have rejected the paper entirely, although that may be considered by some to be a bit extreme.

(Continue to Full Post)

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 as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

What Kind of Academic Signs These Anti-Israel Petitions?

Fred Gottheil
American Thinker
05 September '10


A year and a half ago, January 2009, David C. Lloyd, Professor of English at the University of Southern California, wrote a three-page petition concerning U.S. relations with Israel, which he addressed to incoming President Barack Obama. His petition was endorsed by nine hundred signatories, most located at universities and colleges in the United States, but some affiliated with academic institutions in Canada, United Kingdom, and even Israel.

Lloyd's petition was notable not only for its criticism of Israeli policy -- that is standard fare among the set of academics who subscribe to a post-colonial view of the world -- but rather for its demonizing of the Jewish state.

His technique was anything but novel. It associated Israel with pre-Mandela South Africa. Lloyd's South African-linking brushstrokes were many and crude, citing "collective punishment," "apartheid regime," "racist regime," "besieged Bantustans," "crimes against humanity," and "ethnocidal atrocities." These were layered on his fact-distorting canvas like icing on a poisoned cake.

The petition was written just weeks following the December 2008 Gaza war, which was Israel's response to the more than six thousand rockets launched randomly and sporadically from Gaza into Israel over a three-year period beginning in 2005. While Professor Lloyd describes in much detail the damage inflicted on Gaza by the Israeli response, the petition completely ignores the casus belli -- Hamas' rocket-shelling and terrorist activity. Even Egypt warned Hamas prior to the Gaza war that its violent provocations would invite an Israeli response, and when that response came, Egypt pointed its accusing finger at Hamas. That, too, Lloyd ignored.

(Read full article)

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.
.

An empirical test for academic hypocrisy

Fresnozionism.org
05 September '10

I and others have often written that many ‘critics’ of Israel who purport to be concerned with issues of human rights, fairness, racism and so on actually have a different agenda. We’ve claimed that they are more concerned with demonizing the Jewish state than helping its alleged ‘victims’.

Sometimes it’s not hard to show that ‘non-political’ human rights groups, for example, actually have a financial interest in bashing Israel. For example, there is the case of Human Rights Watch fund-raising in Saudi Arabia, or the huge sums donated to extremist non-governmental organizations in Israel by the European Union.

But what about the legions of anti-Israel academics who are always prepared to bash Israel in the vilest terms? They claim to be motivated by concern for human rights — but are they?

Now Fred Gottheil, a professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, has devised an empirical test to find out. Dr. Gottheil took the case of a petition addressed to President Obama after the Gaza war in December-January 2008-9:

(Read full post)

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.
.