I often feel as afraid and suspicious when I see people sporting American flags--especially the really large ones that take up entire back windows or bumpers on SUVS.

One thing I've learned from bicycle commuting is that the quantity and feverishness of stickers (of any persuasion) on the back of the vehicle is inversely proportional to the skill and attentiveness of the driver.

I think that's a different kind of suspicious.

When you say that students have rated her as "crazy," I'm afraid that was an overstatement. I looked at that link and found that only one, ONE, student rated her as such.

There were only three reviews in total. Of the other two, one thought that she wasn't the best instructor he had ever had, and that she wasn't very clear or very supportive of her students. The other said that she was a great instructor, demanded a lot of work and preparation from her students and was very helpful. Not much of a consensus here.

So I think that when you said that students who have taken her courses rated her as crazy, that was wishful thinking on your part. And, I'm sorry to say, it seems like sloppy reporting on your part. One student, that's all. Though, to your credit, you did provide a link so we could see for ourselves.

I wish that a lot of students did think she was crazy, so I was disappointed to see that this was not the case.

Probably, a lot of students wouldn't be insightful enough to see through her crude biases, and they therefore may absorb some of her attitudes. That would be a shame.

I wondered at first why you bothered to post something about this idiot of little importance. But then, it turns out that she is very important. Not individually but as part of a large group of professors of this ilk who, in the aggregate, can influence a lot of students. I've known some graduate students who were very much like her and who have gone on to become professors.

Joanne, why did you spend so much space harping on that one point, when it's clear you can see what kind of person this is and there's plenty of other stuff offered here? Come now, it's a point you could have made in passing. Here's another way of twisting it: 33% of the students who bothered going to ratemyprofessors think she's crazzzzyyy! 2/3 give her mostly 1's (the lowest rating available). OK, I'll take the editing rap, but still...

I don't think you should devote too much time to this nutcase. It looks like nobody reads her blog and she's pretty irrelevant.

“Unfortunately, a soldier with an M-16 wanted to sit next to me. I told her that I didn't want to sit next to a soldier.”

That's not even a political issue so much as one of basic good manners. It's remarkably arrogant to assume that you can decide who sits next to you on public transportation. Especially given the history of the American civil rights movement, with which Prof. Newman seems to identify.

Oh, come on, Sol. I'm sorry I was so critical, but don't be such a sore sport. In any case, I devoted only a few sentences to the subject. That's hardly harping. The point you made with your 33% argument was weak.

Maybe it's just that your phrase hit a nerve with me. Although I agree with the thrust of your post, I hate to see exagerations, from bloggers on the right or left. I think that the Internet has great potential, and careful reporting (which you normally do) will prevent its credibility from being undermined by MSM journalists who might tend to dismiss this medium.

My main point was that I wish students had the insight to think she was crazy, but, alas...no. And, I wanted to point out that she IS important: as an example of the kind of professor who's all too common.

I agree with you on the phrasing issue, I just hate to see someone spend time working up a post only to have someone come along and nit-pick it. I didn't write this one (take note), so I'm probably even more defensive than otherwise.

Students are ignorant. That's why they're students. We also have a major thing for respecting people with academic credentials in this culture (which is correct), which is why the record of people like this need to be put on the record.

Yikes. That's right! You didn't write this post. That was Emmet Trueman. Talk about sloppy reporting!

Again, my "nitpicking" was because I was disappointed (and annoyed) that Trueman's statement about her students turned out not to be true.

Anyway, I apologize. My mistake.

The larger issue of course remains: as a professor this woman is influencing young, inexperienced students largely innocent of knowledge about the Middle East let alone Jewish history or the complexities of modern Israeli history and the political and religious implications of the Arab/Israeli conflict.

Anybody in contact with people this age knows three things: a. they are impressionable and b. they are ignorant and c. they are hearing all kinds of things, many of which are inflammatory.

It takes years to get even a basic grounding in the facts about even one modern Middle Eastern state let alone the Arab/Israeli conflict. People who've been spending decades learning about the Middle East still spend hours a day trying to figure out just what is going on in Lebanon, for example.

Yet here we have a strongly, even violently opinionated professor, herself very young, "teaching" people even younger than herself, who in all likelihood have no connection to Judaism or the Middle East and no background information with which to balance what she says. Further even the most earnest, serious students are daunted when, asking about the Middle East, one presents them with a stack of books three feet high or a daily list of reading including maybe 20 articles, and says, here. Start with this.

Bottom line they'll listen to the polemicists and won't do the hard historical work. And strictly from a Jewish perspective, it's difficult for us to present our story because there are simply so few of us. There was a story recently about a Jewish person living in Egypt, a student, who had the opportunity to introduce himself, as a Jew, to the people living there. They'd been saturated all their lives with anti-Israel/anti-Semitic propaganda and never met an actual Jew.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/top/editletcontent.php3?artid=6083

That's distressingly common.

Also, Sophia, you might add that many of the most prestigious scholars are anti-Zionist. So, if you worship Noam Chomsky and Edward Said...

There is also the fact that the pro-Palestinian outlook is embedded in the broader "progressive" world view. How many left-wingers are also pro-Zionist? Among Jews, yes there are plenty, though there are many who are anti. But among non-Jews?

Students who lean left tend to accept the left-wing pantheon with little scepticism. They put up posters of Che, knowing nothing of the executions he ordered (of revolutionaries and reformers!) and the gulag system of political prisons he set up. They root for the Sandinistas, knowing nothing of their oppression of the indigenous population of Nicaragua. They won't hear much about Cambodia under Pol Pot or Vietnam after its unification under Ho Chi Minh. They won't know that there are many Iraqi leftists who are glad that Saddam is gone. No...they won't know any of that. But they'll go on and on about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

And this is not only true of students, but many of their elders, as well.

I just looked at your link, at the story of the Jewish student who at times hid or told people he was Jewish while studying in Cairo.

The article reminded me in a small way of what happened to me when studying in Paris. During a student trip over Christmas break, I was assigned to share a room with a Lebanese Maronite woman. At first, she eyed me doubtfully. There was a sizeable group of her Lebanses friends along on the trip, and she may have been disappointed at not being put with them. But we became fast friends. And very close friends.

There was a kind of anti-Israeli atmosphere in the air in Paris at the time; not noticeably due to her friends, it was just general. I'd hear about an anti-Israeli demonstration here and there, reads lots of scathing articles about Israel, see lots of graffiti. But it didn't touch me personally.

Anyway, for a few months I hadn't told this friend that I was Jewish. Don't ask me why; I just didn't feel comfortable doing so. One event that may have put me off was the time we were walking along some Parisian street and were practically accosted by this young Israeli guy. Nothing bad. He was homesick and nervous and asked us if we knew of any Israeli or Jewish clubs or associations or restaurants or whatever in Paris. She looked at him with horror though he clearly meant no harm. And I could swear she was shivering a little. The repugnance on her part was unmistakable, and it unnerved me.

Not too long after that, I went with her to the US embassy to get her a travel visa,so she could visit me in the States. I realized that, if our friendship was going to last beyond my year in France, I'd better tell her. I'd feel better for it, too. While waiting on line, I mentioned as casually as I could that I was Jewish. She seemed not to hear, just looking straight ahead and not saying anything. Then I made sure to mention it again in the same conversational tone. It was clear then that she had heard me the first time. She continued to stare straight ahead. She said nothing.

We continued waiting on line and got the visa. Everything seemed sort of ok. But it wasn't ok. There were no hurtful statements, just a quiet unacknowledged dimming of our friendship after that. She never visited me in the States, of course, even though the visa she received was for a generous five years. We kept in touch in a desultory manner, and when I returned to France for another year, sometime later, we saw each other only a few times. Sometimes it was a bit awkward. And then, well...we lost touch.

Joanne, that's a shame. The hope for the world is that people can get to know each other and thereby drop their prejudice but if that doesn't work, as in your case, what will?

As to the "progressive" worldview: I agree with you but wonder why that is so? There's so much that's non-progressive about Left wing ideology - the real, full-blown totalitarian model carried to its logical extremes as in the Soviet Union - what's progressive about that? And holding Arafat up as a hero - good lord - is it really so politically incorrect to tell the truth about the PLO in Jordan and Lebanon, about what PFLP really did and what it stands for? Already people are trying to frame Hamas as "moderate".

I understand the desire to help "oppressed people." But there's a kneejerk response among many leftists and even many mainstream Democrats to assume "the underdog is always right". Well if you take that to its logical extreme does that make the losers of WWII "right"? Why?

Also, in general, I don't think well meaning academics and youngsters think through the consequences of "helping people" - and nowhere is that better illustrated than in the Arab/Israeli conflict. Simply the way it's framed by the Left, with Israel portrayed as an imperialist Goliath beating up a small, dispossessed and helpless group of people, is hopelessly inaccurate and inflammatory.

And I don't understand why that happened in the first place given that the war against Israel has ALWAYS been multinational and even religious in scope. Also, last I checked, there are still only about 14 million Jews in the world and something like 1.4 billion Muslims; it doesn't make sense, so even in the "underdog" contest there's something awry with the Left's presentation of Israel.

Perhaps it's as simple as the fact that the Soviets backed the PLO and the UAR?

Sophia, I think that a major early turn of events that influenced the world's view of Israel was when Stalin realized that he was better off backing the Arabs rather than the Israelis.

Actually, since the mid-1950s, most people on the left stopped looking to the USSR as their model. But still, Stalin's shift planted the seeds for the switch of the left as a whole against Israel. It took some time for this attitude to move beyond the confines of the old-fashioned Moscow-oriented Communists, as the memories of the Holocaust were still too recent. But the evolution had begun.

And there were two other factors: the rise of the Third World as a model and a cause, and the growing importance of oil. After the 1973 shock, when oil was no longer automatically cheap, it could no longer be taken for granted, and so the Arabs had to be appeased.
Meanwhile, the sufferings of the Third World peoples were immense, current, and fit neatly into an anti-colonialist paradigm. So it began to eclipse the Jewish "narrative," since that story did not have the West as a villain, and it was over, in any case. It was no longer terribly relevant.

The Six Day War was what tore it, I think. As a result of that war, the Israelis were no longer seen as weak and fighting for their lives. Also, at that time France turned from being Israel's major ally into being an ally of the Arabs, and so the USA replaced France as Israel's closest ally. This was a death knell as far as left-wing iconography was concerned.

So, you had European (or what was thought to be European) Israel vs. brown-skinned Third World Arabs. And Israel had become a client state of the USA! No prizes for guessing which of the two would win the sympathy of the left. Then, with the occupation... well, there you are.

This is a case where political fashion, political conscience (ostensibly), and economic interest all pointed in the same direction: away from Israel and towards support for the Arabs. This was true of the left, and not only of the left.

Joanne:

The Six Day War was what tore it, I think. As a result of that war, the Israelis were no longer seen as weak and fighting for their lives.

Ironically, in 1967 Israel was indeed fighting for her very life. (Michael Oren provided some perspective to the PowerLine guys on the subject.)

One of the many mostly-forgotten stories from 1967 -- and one of many reasons why Israel found it essential to strike first -- was the evidence that Egyptian troops were training, in the Sinai, with one-time-use chemical-warfare gear. (You don't train with serious one-time-use gear in peacetime; you simulate instead.) This resulted in a panicked Prime Minister Eshkol placing an emergency order for a million gas masks from -- of all places -- West Germany.

Has any country been as thoroughly misunderstood, by as many people, as 20th-century Israel has? (Well, perhaps the Soviet Union.)

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

But yet - once again, revisionist historians have struck, like Segev, claiming that Israel wasn't really in danger in 1967.

That contradicts absolutely every documented bit of history and common sense besides.

As far as the above assertion that backing Israel isn't as logical or profitable as backing the Arabs, well Chamberlain made that decision in the 1930's.

OBVIOUSLY helping the Jews isn't easy or popular. We are a tiny and hated people, who've been routinely attacked, blamed and victimized and our population decimated repeatedly.

That doesn't make it right to try and destroy us, to vilify us as a people, to harm Israel or denigrate her or sell her down the river!

IS there any such thing as right and wrong anymore? Was there ever? Israel is now portrayed as evil because she is modern. I saw a thing on CNN International this morning about Palestinians who live in caves and "Jewish" settlers who are "threatening their traditional way of life."

Of course, the evil Jooz also provide the cave-dwelling Palestinians with lawyers, moral support and a peace rally.

Are we asking too much? I need an aspirin already.

This was refreshing, I wished I could read every post of yours but it seems i have to go back to work now...

Where are these spam comments like the one above comment coming from?