tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32388212011-10-10T12:00:19.475+01:00A ProspectusJon Ihlenoreply@blogger.comBlogger601100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-37508054679728121272008-05-27T11:54:00.001+01:002008-05-27T11:57:03.243+01:00

Apropro Zbigniew Bzrezinski: Walt and Mearsheimer play Hebrew University. I guess McCarthyism ain't what it used to be.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-32776875948747934172007-10-06T22:46:00.000+01:002007-10-06T22:49:52.999+01:00

If only we were more like them, he says. Indeed. Thanks, David.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-4026972212600781032007-10-06T22:19:00.000+01:002007-10-06T22:45:33.315+01:00

Last month Israeli author Etgar Keret generously gave me an hour of his time for an interview, most of which didn't find its way into the short piece I wrote for the Sunday Tribune to mark his inclusion on the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award shortlist.Keret is an anti-occupation leftist, yet his translator Miriam Shlesinger (herself a pro-Arab activist), was one of the first

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-22372978110380008852007-03-08T19:18:00.000Z2007-03-08T20:15:27.554Z

Trocaire's Palestinian programme officer and former IPSC activist Eoin Murray has withdrawn from tonight's Leviathan debate at Crawdaddy, for which Israeli government press officer Danny Seaman has been flown in. Sources unfriendly to Murray's perspective have told me that Trocaire isn't prepared to stand in the firing line given the organisation's censorship trouble with the BCI over it's Lenten

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1164364005102120092006-11-24T10:22:00.000Z2007-03-08T08:26:39.893Z

There are some out there! Sean Gannon, chairman of Irish Friends of Israel, gets in an economical response to some of the Palestinian delegate-general's more fantastical claims. (Strangely, Hikmat Ajjuri's op-ed from November 10th is not available in the The Irish Times archive.)

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1164363748469178362006-11-24T10:03:00.000Z2006-11-24T10:22:28.480Z

Melanie Phillips highlights a critical assessment of the Peace Now report that claims 40 per cent of West Bank settlements have been built on private Palestinian land. According to Alex Safian of CAMERA (worth reading in full), Peace Now is misrepresenting the legal status of certain types of land in the West Bank. If he's correct (and I'm not in a position to judge), this report would seem to

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1164112084559419412006-11-21T12:12:00.000Z2006-11-21T13:48:27.246Z

Anne Applebaum ponders why Darfur has inspired a coalition of activism while concentration camps in North Korea and religious persecution in Iran elicit shrugs from the international community: I can offer no scientific explanation for why the tragedy of Darfur conjures up the specter of history's judgment and why other tragedies do not. But the answer must lie in the fact that this conflict has

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1164108971718462352006-11-21T11:01:00.000Z2006-11-21T11:36:11.810Z

Ken Livingstone has become the latest person to make the suspect argument that Muslims are being demonised as Jews were earlier in Europe's history: Over recent weeks we have seen a demonization of Muslims only comparable to the demonization of Jews from the end of the 19th century. He cited Jack Straw's angst about the niqab as indicative of the trend.I find this argument persuasive insofar as

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163780210042075922006-11-17T16:07:00.000Z2006-11-17T16:16:50.043Z

"anonymous1" responded to my post below on Jew-baiting in Cork by leaving this link. My response got long, so I've made a post of it."You haven't explained why you've drawn my attention to that quote, but I'll assume the point is that if Jews can misuse Holocaust iconography, anti-Israel protesters can legitimately pretend the near-successful annihilation of Europe's Jews by the Nazis is

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163776186247167102006-11-17T14:54:00.000Z2006-11-17T15:09:46.456Z

Michael Jansen forgot to mention something in her breathless letter from Dubai in Thursday's Irish Times: Dubai, a hub of Middle Eastern commerce, is changing rapidly, globalising; its people are reaching out boldly to embrace new things, new experiences. But not Israelis. Drogheda United has had to cancel a trip to a football conference in the UAE because the team's Israeli general manager,

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163768594720237532006-11-17T12:28:00.000Z2007-02-09T13:09:35.003Z

Dublin's MEP Proinsias De Rossa some time out of his busy schedule in Strasbourg to vilify Israel in front of the European Parliament on Wednesday with the histrionic claim that Gaza is a "prison camp":"Gaza is a prison camp for 1.3 million Palestinians and it is sealed tight by the state of Israel. The occupants of this camp are being systematically starved, their health and education

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163683263939435082006-11-16T10:03:00.000Z2006-11-16T13:21:03.950Z

By now everyone has probably heard that Omar Bakri Mohammed, an imam exiled from the UK for promoting terror, has called for Dublin airport (or Shannon - he doesn't seem too sure) to be attacked for facilitating the Yankee pigs/Zionist dogs/pilgrims to Knock in their war against people like him. Twenty Major and MacDara have called for pre-emptive strikes.I had the pleasure of subbing the story

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163671300299479182006-11-16T09:54:00.000Z2007-03-01T11:56:09.510Z

I don't get a lot of comments, but I've had to reject about half of them so far because they've been submitted by anonymous readers and/or were borderline libellous. I'd prefer people to comment under they're own names or at least under a consistent pseudonym. As far as I can tell, three readers - with rather different sorts of comments - have posted under "anonymous". It would help to be able to

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163604646743338512006-11-15T14:17:00.000Z2006-11-17T12:41:12.586Z

A European Jewish Congress survey has reported a rise in anti-Semitic activity and discourse in western Europe during July and August, when Israel was at war with Hizbullah. This took many forms, including media Jew-baiting (comparing Israel to Nazi Germany), implicating Judaism in the war, open support for the anti-Semitic terror group Hizbullah and targetting synagogues, as in Cork:Although

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163190163546477162006-11-10T19:59:00.000Z2006-11-11T14:17:09.836Z

Or I should say, tanz yourself to shul, or David Mamet will zetz you in the tuchas.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163185060416141722006-11-10T18:50:00.000Z2006-11-10T18:57:40.446Z

Surely this can't be a serious proposal. I mean, Bedouins driving their camels to the Galilee?Jews leaving Kiryat Shmona for the Negev? Finally the Jews won't have to hear the call of the muezzin during the day and the celebratory shooting at weddings at night. And the Arabs of "Northern Israel" will be able to travel on public transportation on Shabbat and will no longer be forced to sing "

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163162334137267542006-11-10T12:10:00.000Z2007-02-25T10:02:50.063Z

Predictably, the UN is getting itself into a lather over the deaths of 18 Palestinian civilians in a poorly aimed Israel artillery attack in Beit Hanoun the other day, which seems to have been caused by a failure in a weapons system.On the one hand it's easy to ignore this kind of diplomatic ritual. After all, the people who should care most about dead Palestinians, Hamas, are almost certainly

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163160489611480442006-11-10T11:39:00.000Z2006-11-11T04:17:39.730Z

If you think Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem can agree on nothing, think again. There's nothing like a gay pride parade to unite people in hatred. Especially lovely is the embrace by yeshiva students of fascist street thuggery:But nearly every night for the last week, ultra-Orthodox men have rioted in religious neighborhoods, setting trash on fire and throwing stones at police -- in a show of force

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163158633738762822006-11-10T11:23:00.000Z2006-11-10T11:37:13.746Z

The Jewish population in Germany has tripled in the last decade, but Jews in isolated communities there are going to be asking themselves some tough questions after neo-Nazis attacked a Kristallnacht memorial yesterday. French Jews, who have been putting up with this kind of crap for years, have been voting with their feet.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163073956015137892006-11-09T11:29:00.000Z2007-02-21T12:07:31.016Z

Nuremberg LawsToday is the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or "night of broken glass", the nationwide Nazi pogrom against the Jews of Germany, Austria and Sudetenland. Kristallnacht is widely regarded as the beginning of the Holocaust because it revealed not only the willingness of ordinary Germans to attack their Jewish neighbours, but also because of the collective German passivity in the

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1163071610675169882006-11-09T10:23:00.000Z2007-03-10T20:38:58.338Z

Those who advocate boycotting Israeli universities and their academics claim that they are taking a moral stand against the "oppression" meted out by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and, once upon a time, Gaza. I've always found this "moral" explanation hard to swallow, since anti-Israel activists are generally happy to make nice with genocidal Arab terrorist groups. It's tempting to

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162827099759387322006-11-06T15:30:00.000Z2006-11-06T15:31:39.760Z

So that nobody gets confused between the various anonymous commenters, please take two seconds to create a pseudonym before posting.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162826893690568602006-11-06T15:15:00.000Z2006-12-18T17:55:49.910Z

My post on student objections Feilim O hAdhmaill's appointment to the faculty of Applied Social Studies at University College Cork has been generating some comments, but because it's down the page, I thought I'd give a brief update.An anonymous commenter seems to think that the conversation begins and ends with the fact that O hAdhmaill was deemed the most qualified for the job:by virtue of UCC

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162642558428319072006-11-04T11:53:00.000Z2006-11-11T12:00:40.363Z

Even the BBC doesn't try to hide the fact that the two women who were killed in Gaza yesterday died because they made themselves combat participants by helping terrorists escape from a mosque: Two women have been killed as Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of women gathered to help besieged gunmen flee a mosque in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. One of the women told the BBC they had dressed

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162483447965469662006-11-02T15:45:00.000Z2006-11-02T16:04:07.983Z

Someone in Jerusalem finally noticed that the public profile of the Jewish state is deep in the toilet. Even Americans, who overwhelmingly support Israel, seem to view it as kind of a cross between cold war East Germany and 1950s Ireland:What kind of image does the average American have of Israel? According to recent focus groups, the picture of the Jewish state is a grim one: gray and

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162482326983144892006-11-02T15:34:00.000Z2006-11-02T15:45:26.996Z

In his new web magazine, Covenant, Barry Rubin writes about the kindred prejudices of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism:Today, the two most widely hated peoples in the world today are the Americans and the Jews or, in national terms, the United States and Israel. Moreover, these two unreasoning hatreds are closely linked. Apologists

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162376226261954052006-11-01T09:53:00.000Z2006-11-01T18:05:21.493Z

As an outspoken Jewish-American, I occasionally get calls from Irish news and current affairs shows to speak out on topical issues concerning Jews and/or Americans - usually American politics, because I voted for Bush in 2004, but sometimes anti-Semitism. Often a researcher is looking for a background briefing, but sometimes they stick me on a programme, too.I wasn't exactly sure, then, why a

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162374386615005392006-11-01T09:09:00.000Z2006-11-01T09:46:29.093Z

Speaking on Irish soil yesterday, the vile Hizbullah propagandist Ibrahim Mousawi (may his tongue rot in his head), in Dublin at the invitation of the curiously-named Irish Anti-War Movement, issued a thinly veiled threat to Irish troops who departed for Lebanon yesterday as part of the UNIFIL mission (pay close attention to the Tony Soprano passive voice at the end):"The Irish soldiers and the

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162301096149165292006-10-31T13:18:00.000Z2007-03-06T02:40:24.653Z

The Zionist conspiracy is now so pervasive that it actually extends to the flagrant misspelling of unconventionally spelled names, such as "Jon", as the IPSC has discovered: John Pike Jon Pike is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the Open University in the UK. Some people, typically Israelis, mistransliterate his name as "John".I've had the name

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162298933782046082006-10-31T12:36:00.000Z2006-11-01T09:51:35.456Z

The nice people in the Irish Anti-War Movement (tm), in their love of peace, have invited Ibrahim Mousawi, former news director and now board member of Al Manar TV, the propaganda arm of the terrorist army Hizbullah, which started a war with Israel this summer for no discernibly legitimate reason, to share a platform in Dublin with the Saddam Hussein-loving narcissist George Galloway.Set aside

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1162298109104481362006-10-31T12:30:00.000Z2006-10-31T13:25:36.763Z

On the morning a 150-strong contingent of Irish soldiers heads to Lebanon to join the UNIFIL mission, I came across a news report which suggests there may have been a positive outcome for Israel in its war with Hizbullah after all:More than two months after the war ended in stalemate, many Israelis have come to see it as a costly failure. Those who live closest to Lebanon, though, say it altered

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1161965510413442502006-10-27T16:46:00.000+01:002006-10-27T17:11:50.913+01:00

In the abstract, the sentiments expressed by President McAleese at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Clonskeagh yesterday chime with my own feelings about immigration in general:We, I hope, will try our best to make Ireland a country of real welcome and a country of celebration of difference, a country that understands that all that difference gives such a rich range of experience, of culture, of

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1161963011793838822006-10-27T15:30:00.000+01:002006-12-18T17:56:23.323Z

It's good to know that even when I've been remiss about updating Ex Ihle, the archive is still getting hits. Most of the traffic around here lately can be attributed in some way to the fact that I seem to have been the only person who publicly noted that one of the signatories of the anti-Israel boycott letter that appeared in The Irish Times last month was convicted IRA bombmaker and UCC

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1161081912287766532006-10-17T11:44:00.000+01:002006-10-24T14:23:32.460+01:00

As an experiment, I've switched on comments for all posts. I'll be devising a comments policy - a statement, really - but until then, please play nice.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1161081758817474582006-10-17T11:29:00.000+01:002006-10-20T00:53:58.806+01:00

The New Republic's Marty Peretz tries valiantly to digest a vat of overheated post-colonialist critique in a long, bemused piece about Hamid Dabashi and Columbia University's vindictive cabal of Middle East scholars. I have to confess I don't know what Peretz is talking about half the time, but his citations of Dabashi's completely freaked-out essay on Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran -

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1160998642299670522006-10-16T12:30:00.000+01:002006-10-16T12:37:22.313+01:00

Leon Wieseltier shows how the tormented anti-Israel intellectual Tony Judt, the "shahid of Washington Square", still manages to be everywhere, despite the efforts of the all-powerful Jewish lobby to prevent him from speaking on the subject of the all-powerful Jewish lobby at the Polish consulate in New York: [W]hat Judt was prevented from delivering at the Polish consulate was a conspiracy theory

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1160523332259384932006-10-11T00:27:00.000+01:002006-10-11T00:35:32.260+01:00

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have somehow managed to secure a publishing deal for a book on the "Israel lobby" despite said lobby's ruthless suppression of all criticism of Israel! And this after their well-publicised essay in the LRB in March. This must be like when the Jews faked the Holocaust. There's no other explanation.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1160522210834457122006-10-10T23:43:00.000+01:002006-10-11T00:17:45.946+01:00

Last week New Yorker writer and Long Islander Jeffrey Goldberg and Ha'aretz's US correspondent, Shmuel Rosner, held an illuminating public conversation at Slate - which pioneered this kind of high-intellectual web dialogue, perhaps most famously with the Mendelsohn Breakfast Table - concerning Goldberg's new book, Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide. All of it is worth

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1160520015559152502006-10-10T20:38:00.000+01:002006-10-10T23:40:17.210+01:00

Why pay $1.65 billion for YouTube when you can have JewTube for free?

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1160318654219846702006-10-08T15:05:00.000+01:002006-10-08T15:44:14.260+01:00

If anyone doubts that James Bowen and the IPSC use "Jews" and "Zionists" interchangeably, consider his astonishingly paranoid approval of an article, from the august, um, "World War 4 Report", ludicrously entitled "Save Darfur: Zionist Conspiracy?"By checking references to "Save Darfur" one easily determines that this is a zionist movement used for propaganda purposes. Using genocide for

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159728156791857992006-10-01T19:37:00.000+01:002006-10-01T19:42:36.800+01:00

David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy touched on the Shylock Fallacy about a month ago in a post drawing attention to an informative Washington Post article on Israel's assassination policies.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159712940165742782006-10-01T15:09:00.000+01:002006-10-01T15:31:08.030+01:00

One would need an entire blog to compile the various layers of irony inscribed in the spectacle of genocide-threatening Holocaust deniers staging an anti-Semitic art exhibition rooted in the visual rhetoric of Der Stuermer, but perhaps my favourite is that two Israelis were able to make an ironic joke of the whole disgrace by sponsoring their own contest! It should come as no surprise that these

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159525040665424072006-09-29T10:52:00.000+01:002006-12-25T01:02:59.683Z

Philadelphia's critic-at-large Carlin Romano takes us on a tour of "comparative genocide" in a review essay of a new book, Why Not Kill Them All? The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, by Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley, the latter of whom is the director of the University of Pennsylvania's Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict - you know, the awful sort of

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159523510827401802006-09-29T10:48:00.000+01:002006-09-29T10:51:50.826+01:00

Fred Halliday of OpenDemocracy explains why the romance between the left and Islamism is likely to end in tears. He offers a handy history lesson in the closing paragraphs, too:The reactionary (the word is used advisedly) nature of much of [the Islamists'] programme on women, free speech, the rights of gays and other minorities is evident.There is also a mindset of anti-Jewish prejudice that is

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159523282465665252006-09-29T10:45:00.000+01:002006-12-18T17:57:11.523Z

Something tells me that Irish academics looking for State funding just might think twice about boycotting Israeli institutions.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159467953898259662006-09-28T19:17:00.000+01:002006-09-28T19:25:53.906+01:00

Take a look at David Aaronovitch's polemical documentary on anti-Israel terrorism and its apologists. The first part features Irish Middle East scholar Rory Miller, author of Ireland and the Palestine Question: 1948-2004. I interviewed Rory for the JTA in April 2005.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159438905150883222006-09-28T11:05:00.000+01:002006-12-18T17:58:58.763Z

Ami Isseroff of ZioNation draws his readers' attention to the Irish call for an academic boycott and explains why even insignificant anti-Israeli voices shouldn't be ignored:Nonetheless, every such public call for boycott cannot be ignored.We understand that the real purpose of the boycott movement, the stated purpose, is to discredit Israel and end the Jewish state, rather than ending the

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159437274430170372006-09-28T09:46:00.000+01:002006-09-28T10:54:34.466+01:00

One of the more persistent and widespread myths (so persistent and widespread it's practically invisible) about the Jewish character is that the Jew is vengeful in pursuit of justice - to the point of drawing blood- and that this tendency finds its ground in the Torah, or the Old Testament. Contemporary media coverage of fighting between Israel and the Arabs perpetuates a version of this myth by

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159355905226707512006-09-27T11:36:00.000+01:002006-12-18T17:58:28.316Z

Today's Irish Times carries an opinion piece by Guy Beiner, a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, criticising the Irish call for an academic boycott of Israel. While Beiner makes a persuasive argument that the boycott is wrongheaded because it strikes at the very institutions within Israel most likely to promote sympathy for the Palestinians, it fails to consider the possibility that

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159352141315006282006-09-27T10:43:00.000+01:002006-09-27T11:32:43.163+01:00

After presenting his credentials at Aras an Uachtarain two weeks ago, the new Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Zion Evrony, has been busy introducing himself to the Irish people, first on Newstalk106 last week and now today in the Irish Independent:The heart of the conflict in the Middle East has never been the "occupation", but rather the refusal of Israel's enemies to recognise its right to live

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159296467956735782006-09-26T19:12:00.000+01:002006-09-26T19:48:38.356+01:00

John Fay and Kevin Breathnach, both old associates of mine in the Irish blogosphere, have kindly linked to Ex Ihle today. Kevin has a little trouble spelling my name, but he's not alone in that. John raises some interesting questions about this post on Irish academics calling for a boycott of Israeli universities: What's going on here? Why is Notre Dame the only non-Irish university listed? Are

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1159217388455183022006-09-25T20:56:00.000+01:002006-12-18T17:58:04.806Z

The Israeli media suddenly got very interested over the holiday weekend in the comically grandiose call by 61 Irish academics for an EU boycott of Israeli universities after an Israeli academic sent his own group letter in response to members of the European Commission. See here, here and here.Professor Yosef Yeshurun of Bar-Ilan University co-signed the letter with Dr Edward Beck of Walden

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1158950372018164972006-09-22T17:45:00.000+01:002006-12-18T17:57:27.503Z

David Landy, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign's Jewish mascot, pops up on the letters page of The Irish Times today, where he trots out a logically peculiar justification for his organisation's support of a selective academic boycott of Israeli universities: the Palestinians themselves "overwhelmingly support" it. Well, a clear majority of Palestinians also support suicide bombing. Does

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1158925502653446022006-09-22T12:19:00.000+01:002006-09-22T17:15:13.543+01:00

Harold Bloom got here way before me, but I'm continually fascinated by the way the principles of deconstruction map themselves not only to key aspects of Jewish mysticism, but to foundational precepts of Judaism. Consider this Rosh Hashanah meditation from Chabad kabbalist Tzvi Freeman:The Hebrew language has no word for "things", for "objects" or for "stuff". Even the words "physical" and "

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1158913689509260242006-09-22T09:24:00.000+01:002006-09-22T09:28:09.520+01:00

Pope Benedict gets a rebuke as the Forward shuffles to the defense of Islam - and cautions Jews away from trusting Christians:But bad history makes for bad policy. The violent convulsions wracking the Muslim world today are no more inherent to Islam than the Crusades or the pogroms were essential to Christianity. As for the current confrontation between Islam and Judaism, it is, in the broad

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1158838125842651162006-09-21T12:11:00.000+01:002006-12-18T18:00:42.716Z

Ryan Tubridy addressed the anti-Israel boycott today on his RTE radio show (about 7 minutes in) - not only in economic terms, but as an instrument of isolation, which suggests my recent article on the topic has had some impact on the debate. Indeed, Eamon Delaney, a guest on the panel and my sometime editor at Magill, gave me a shout-out. (Would have preferred to be on the panel myself, but my

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1158835657118602222006-09-21T11:46:00.000+01:002006-09-21T11:47:37.126+01:00

Meryl Yourish shows us what happens when you mess with The Tribe.

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1158751435950352912006-09-20T12:03:00.000+01:002006-12-18T18:00:04.100Z

If you didn't sleep through the latest denunciation/call for boycott of Israel on the letters page of The Irish Times last week, you might have noticed one of its 60 academic signatories was IRA bomber and Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign member Feilim O hAdhmaill, who served six years of a 25 year term for being caught in possession of17kg of Semtex and a list of targets...while working as

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1158749858289070502006-09-20T11:55:00.000+01:002006-09-20T11:57:38.296+01:00

Yes, says a former advisor to Ariel Sharon: If the United Nations berated Israel in a less cartoonish way, it would be hard for the United States and the Europeans to countenance Israel essentially ignoring the organization when it comes to the safety of its own citizens. In an Israeli calculus, then, the U.N.'s bias gives Israel elbow room--from those that actually matter in the Israeli mindset

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3238821.post-1158576919825363472006-09-18T11:31:00.000+01:002006-09-20T12:25:01.456+01:00

On the same day Pope Benedict was busy making apologies to a theatrically inflamed Muslim world for insensitively quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor, Dublin was host to another Catholic leader with a propensity for interfaith autism when Cardinal Jozef Glemp of Warsaw came to town to inaugurate a Polish chaplaincy at St Audoen's Church. I'm all for happy-clappy confraternity between Irish

Jon Ihlenoreply@blogger.com0