Unplugged Mike

Brenner and Cole Discussion

My email discussion with Juan Cole. I invited him to comment. He refuses:

BRENNER:

Dear Professor Cole:

I have posted a response to your post on MEMRI on my own blog,
http://mlbrenner.blogspot.com and would be interested in your
comments, particularly to the concluding portion of my post.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Michael Brenner

COLE:

Dear Michael:

There are some positions (positions, not people) that don't lend
themselves to fruitful dialogue. The one you have sketched out is one of them.

I have not "admitted" that I have no source for my figure on MEMRI
financing. They declare almost $2 million a year in the US alone and have offices in several capitals, and scanning the entire Arabic press would not be an inexpensive operation or one that could be done from Washington, DC.

Far from being "anti-Israeli," I wrote against the European boycott of Israeli academics, and am among the few Middle East experts from the US to be involved in a multi-year joint project with Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities.

It is true that I abhor Ariel Sharon and everything he stands for. In that I think you will find I have many Israeli analogues.

JRIC

BRENNER:

I have heard this line of reasoning before and disagree with you,
acknowledging that if by fruitful dialogue you mean a discussion where there is a good chance that I might take on some of your opinions, it is not likely. I have noticed that when people fear losing an argument, they decline to participate, citing the risk of fruitless discussion, regardless of political position. If, however, we can have a discussion on topics that leads to increased understanding, then I think it is worth it.

You seem too sensitive to semantic minutiae, especially for someone
who is not averse to throwing around political labels like "far-right" and so on. You are not pro-Israeli, though I'm relatively sure you would say that your criticisms can only help Israel, not hurt it. You do not seem to be especially friendly to positions which acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. You are entitled to characterize your own position as you like. Labels are an admittedly imperfect form of communication, and if you take issue with mine, you can ignore them. But when I see someone citing MERIP and people like Kurt Nimmo and Robert Fisk, I have a hard time concluding that such a person is friendly to Israel.

I sincerely commend you on your stand against the European boycott,
though I must say that standing against an act of racism like that
does not matter either way for assessing your position on the
conflict.

I still think you played fast and loose with the facts here. You have not set out a source for your $60 million number, and that is your responsibility, since you made the original claim. I sincerely hope that your thought process was not to extrapolate that because MEMRI is essentially an organization run by Jewish people with American and Israeli funding sources, that it therefore must have a great deal of money behind it.

And I don't think MEMRI reads every Arab newspaper every day. It
looks at government presses and probably pulls most of its stuff off
the Net. It translates a few articles a day, if that.

And as I said, there would be no need for them for others like
yourself presented an accurate picture of the Arab world, a place
where, unfortunately, hard-core antisemitic beliefs have taken hold.
This was my central point.

It is interesting that you felt the need to remind me that you abhor
Ariel Sharon even though I did not mention Sharon in my post. MEMRI
does not profess to be pro-Sharon, even though both of its founders
were opposed to Oslo, and I would wager that a good number of MEMRI
readers are not pro-Sharon either. (And why does their position on
Oslo make any difference?) Thomas Friedman and New York Times are
certainly not pro-Sharon.

If it is pro-Sharon to point out instances of antisemitic hatred in
the Arab press and trumpet liberal Arab voices, then you are
illustrating my point, which is that the left has become soft on
antisemitism. And these voices are secular and religious, contrary to what you claimed.

I myself think the major reason for this is that the Left relies a
great deal on class warfare, and because it sees Jews as a successful minority group, it sees antisemitism as a less important issue. I'm not necessarily averse to class warfare, but it is ironic that the people most protected by ignoring antisemitism in the Arab world are ultra-wealthy Arab elites who use the stuff to keep their peoples in line.

I again extend an invitation for you to comment and appreciate your
writing back to me.

Thank you,

Michael Brenner

COLE:

This is dreary. I have repeatedly said that I support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish stated.

Please find someone else to argue with and/or demonize.

cheers Juan

BRENNER:

I'm sorry you feel that way. Your refusal to engage in a very
legitimate and moderate form of debate is really quite unfortunate.
With regard to what you describe as "demonizing", you are hardly a
model of level-headed critiquing. I have no intention of demonizing
you; I am merely positing an argument. I've been quite polite in the process of doing so.

I believe I have made clear my view that the Left is not taking
antisemitism as seriously as the Right and is thus ceding moral
capital to the right in the process. Your playing fast and loose with the facts in evaluating MEMRI is merely symptomatic of this
phenomenon; I don't believe you would be as damning of a pro-Arab
organization if it did the same thing. I'm not accusing you or
demonizing you in any way; I don't believe you are antisemitic, much
as you sometimes rely on sources that I would describe as antisemitic.

As I said, you are free to ignore my approximate labels if you wish,
since they are not essential to my argument.

If this is indeed the attitude you insist on taking, I can see why you view debate as a fruitless endeavor. It is an unbecoming attitude for an intellectual, in my view. If this is indeed your attitude, I am not sure why you bothered to respond to me in the first place. I hope you don't treat your students this way. My Middle East studies professor at Vassar, Andy Davison, who holds many views similar to yours, was far more welcoming of opinions from across the political spectrum.

My invitation to you to comment remains open.

Sincerely,

Michael Brenner

posted by Michael Brenner @ 3:20 PM 4 comments

The Deceptive Juan Cole and MEMRI

Academics do themselves and their students a great disservice when they substitute preaching for teaching. Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan, runs a blog called "Informed Comment" which has received considerable attention, much of it from the echo-chamber on the far-left. However, Cole touched off a wider debate this month when he decided to take a shot at a favored anti-Israel target, the Middle East Media Research Institute, better known as MEMRI. Cole's accusations were typically exaggerated and unbalanced, probably intentionally so.

Cole's original comment on MEMRI was almost comical in addition to being wrong. He accused MEMRI of:

1. Having $60,000,000 budget (yeah, you read that right);

2. "[C]leverly cherry-pick[ing] the vast Arabic press, which serves 300 million people, for the most extreme and objectionable articles and editorials. It carefully does not translate the moderate articles."; and of being

3. "[O]ne of a number of public relations campaigns essentially on behalf of the far right-wing Likud Party in Israel that tries to shape American perceptions of Muslims and the Middle East in a negative direction."

Yigal Carmon, who runs MEMRI, proceeded to e-mail Cole and threaten him with a lawsuit. Carmon said that he had no idea where Cole got the $60 mil figure from, reminded Cole that MEMRI does not, in fact, look only for antisemitic articles and articles critical of the United States, but also for progressive Arab articles, and told Cole that he had nothing to do with the Likud party.

Cole admitted
that he had no source for his $60 million quote, mischaracterized Carmon's reminder that progressive Arab voices were emphasized on MEMRI, and repeated his guilt-by-association accusations that MEMRI was a Likud house organ because Carmon and Meyrav Wurmser, who is MEMRI's co-founder, are identified as being on the right.

Cole's well-known as an anti-Israel activist, but his MEMRI claims are worth commenting upon because a number of left-wingers have made them.

I read a lot of what MEMRI puts out, and they are (surprise), not in the business of providing the Arab world with good public relations, which monarchical ambassadors with good English who school at Georgetown and Harvard, along with European leaders like Jacques Chirac and Western Arabist professors like Mr. Cole who dominate Middle Eastern studies in the US and Europe, are quite adept at doing. They do indeed spend time translating what people like Mr. Cole do not, the daily barrage of antisemitic filth that appears in the Arab presses. Mr. Cole seems to believe that this practice is unjustified because it does not include the moderate voices, but he fails to ask the obvious question, which is: Why aren't any of the pro-Arab organizations and academics he is constantly boosting doing what MEMRI is doing in addition to providing their take on the Arab world? Why are accusations of rampant antisemitism in the Arab world met with accusations toward Israel first rather than condemnation first?

And why isn't Mr. Cole thankful that MEMRI provides progressive Arab voices from the Arab media to an extent that few others do? These articles (which are not, as Mr. Cole erroneously claims, all written by secularists) suggest that there are indeed voices in the mainstream of the Arab world who are horrified by the hatred that is a part of the mainstream Arab discourse. They suggest that the problems of the Arabs are not insoluble. Mr. Cole apparently prefers not to highlight these voices; it suggests, as I have argued before, that so-called progressives are not progressives at all, but merely left-wing conservatives who simply cling to a different set of orthodox values. Like many ideologues, these folks do not allow the truth to get in the way of their politics.

There is little question that highlighting antisemitic articles in the Arab press and providing self-critical Arab voices is a favorite activity of right-wingers. The response should not be to question the motivation. The response of left-wingers should be to ask why highlighting antisemitic hatred is not a favorite activity of self-styled left-wing progressives as well. Left-wing progressives claim to be against antisemitism, but they are awfully weak on standing up to it when that means criticizing their unarguably non-progressive de facto allies in the Arab world.

posted by Michael Brenner @ 9:00 PM 10 comments