...I don't believe that a truly bum prediction can be dismissed as the equivalent of a bad hair day. It's evidence of some fundamental misunderstanding or latent bias. And while academics aren't paid to make predictions, they make them anyway, often in support of some political agenda. So as long as academic oracles continue to issue predictions, I'll continue to collect them, test them against reality, and grade them. Today I offer a fine specimen of a failed prediction. Grade: "F."

The pseudo-oracle is Tanya Reinhart, a former student of Noam Chomsky's and an emeritus professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, who now teaches at the University of Utrecht. She writes an occasional political column for Israel's largest daily newspaper, and she's the author of a book entitled Israel/Palestine: How To End the War of 1948. To call Reinhart a post-Zionist, or even an anti-Zionist, doesn't do her justice. She has made the reviling of Israel an art form, on behalf of an appreciative audience who thrill to her every denunciation and condemnation. The late Edward Said called her book "the most devastating critique now available of Israel's policy toward the Palestinian people," and that says a lot...