Film Park Slope, March 15, 7:30pm. "All the Ships at Sea" with director Dan Sallit
Evelyn Bell, a Catholic professor of theology, and her younger sister
Virginia are reunited after many years when Virginia returns home in a
depression after being ejected from a religious cult. At a lakeside
retreat in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the sisters try to reestablish
their relationship, talking about their very different systems of
belief, and about the oppressive childhood that still hangs over
them….
For more information about Film Park Slope please contact, Benjamin Resnick.
What is an inclusive Jewish community? A conversation with Edgar
M. Bronfman, Rabbi Andy Bachman, and Beth Zasloff, March 18, 7:30pm
In Hope, Not Fear,
internationally renowned philanthropist and community leader Edgar M.
Bronfman and his co-author Beth Zasloff propose a new direction in
Jewish life for the open societies of North America–a direction in
which Judaism will not merely survive but will in fact flourish.
Arguing that the Jewish future cannot be grounded in fear of
anti-Semitism and intermarriage, Bronfman reexamines important texts
and interviews Jewish leaders to identify a new course for revitalizing
the faith and community.
For more information about the book, please click here .
Come Learn with Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster of Rabbis for Human Rights, Sunday, March 22, 11am
What does Judaism have to say about human rights?
Are the values of human rights Jewish values? How do we balance the
rights of others with the need to protect ourselves? Rabbi Rachel
Kahn-Troster, Director of Education and Outreach for Rabbis for Human
Rights-North America will lead us through a discussion of Judaism and
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the limits of self-
defense, and the Jewish role in the discussion of human rights around
the world. She will teach about RHR-NA's recent work to end U.S.-
sponsored torture and ongoing human rights campaigns, and help us get
involved with these critical issues as individuals and as a community.
For more information, please contact Rabbi Bronstein
Sowing Crisis: Rashid Khalidi at CBE, April 5, 7:30 p.m. Come hear Columbia University's Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies discuss his new book, Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East.
Mr.
Khalidi, one of the world's leading scholars of the contemporary Middle
East, has written over a hundred articles on aspects of Middle East
history and politics, as well as pieces in The New York Times, The Financial Times,
The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune
and The Nation. He has also been a guest on numerous
radio and TV shows including All Things Considered, Talk of
the Nation, Morning Edition, News Hour with Jim Lehrer,
The Charlie Rose Show, and Nightline, and on the BBC, Radio
France Inter, the CBC and the Voice of America.
In my view, there is a problem about Khalidi’s trustworthiness. He wrote an op-ed piece for the NY Times in January, claiming to know that a certain Israeli general voiced quasi-racist sentiments about Palestinians. We now know that the general in question never said what Khalidi said he said. A month after the op-ed piece appeared, the Times, after investigating the alleged sources for Khalidi’s claim, apologized.
I wrote to Rabbi Andy of Beth Elohim, repeatedly, to alert him to the problem, but Rabbi Andy never saw fit to respond to my messages. Here is one of my letters to the good Rabbi:
Dear Rabbi Bachman,
I notice that Rashid Khalidi will speak at CBE on April 5.
For many years I had great respect for Khalidi, regarding him as someone with whom I might disagree but whom I must nevertheless respect for his scholarly achievements and scholarly objectivity. Of course, I also felt that it is important to keep up channels of communication with thoughtful partisans of the Arab-Palestinian cause. I should also say that he and I corresponded, very occasionally, over the years, and that in all my contacts with him he was always most courteous.
But some of my friends suggested all along that my confidence in him was misplaced; that Khalidi was not above using doubtful propagandistic tricks, and indeed, hateful vituperation of the Jewish project in Israel. I never took the trouble of studying all of his opus in detail, even though I was familiar with some of his books, and had, indeed, found troublesome aspects in these.
Then came his op-ed piece in the New York Times of January 7. In this piece, Khalidi wrote
This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”
As it happens, Ya’alon never wrote or said what Khalidi said he did. Instead, Ya’alon wrote the very opposite, viz.
I defined it from the beginning of the confrontation: the very deep internalization by the Palestinians that terrorism and violence will not defeat us, will not make us fold. If that deep internalization does not exist at the end of the confrontation, we will have a strategic problem with an existential threat to Israel. If that [lesson] is not burned into the Palestinian and Arab consciousness, there will be no end to their demands of us….
When Ya’alon spoke of a feeling of being defeated, he referred to Jews, not to Arabs.
After the NY Times published this op-ed piece, it conducted a 3-week search for the alleged statements by Ya’alon, and, not finding them, it retracted them in an editorial statement on January 30.
The quotation that Khalidi presented has a bit of a history, and a search for its origins makes it clear that Khalidi, who presumably reads Hebrew or at least has access to people who do, must have known that what he wrote was plainly fraudulent. In my own blog
http://www.ibegtodisagree.com/
I give the essential facts behind this fraud in my postings of Jan. 11, Jan. 14, and Jan. 30. I want to urge you to study these materials, please, closely. I also request that you share this information with members of your congregation, some of whom may wish to question Khalidi about this matter when he visits you next month.
While the New York Times had to apologize for Khalidi’s misrepresentations, he, Khalidi, as far as I know, has never commented on how and why he misrepresented General Ya’alon. Obviously, academic life needs a variety of opinion, including a vigorously presented advocacy of viewpoints favorable to the cause of Palestinian Arabs. But the frauds of Khalidi’s op-ed piece are not matters of opinion at all. They are, well, frauds, It is my opinion that this incident is very grave. Khalidi committed the worst of all possible academic crimes: an apparently deliberate misrepresentation of the truth. He really shouldn’t be teaching in a first-class university. Nor should he, in my view, be invited to speak at a synagogue.
Khalidi once told a reporter that he has approximately one thousand Jewish friends. He has a very pleasant manner, and, like most people, we like it when people talk nicely to us. But, mutadis mutandis, Madoff was an even nicer guy. We should have asked more questions of him, and we should ask hard questions of Professor Khalidi.
Sincerely,
Werner Cohn
Werner Cohn
Prof. Emer. of Sociology, Univ. of BC
http://www.wernercohn.com/
email: wernercohn@mac.com
mailing address: PO Box 021591, Brooklyn NY 11202
tel. 718-802-1314
blogs:
http://www.fringegroups.com/
http://www.ibegtodisagree.com/