Protest Daniel Pipes in SF on Wed.

Fuck Pipes

Holocaust denial bad, Japanese Internment Revision good.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2309

Note, one reason that he is apparently willing to engage in this odious practice is because of his desire to incarcerate and expel Muslims from the US.

I wouldn't call him an Islamophobe, just a good old fashion racist. He would have been right there with people like Earl Warren and Scoop Jackson in the 1940s, demanding that something be done about "the Japs".


--Richard

We have gotten several emails today from people who are upset that "you" are condoning taking away the free speech rights of Mr. Pipes. "We" did not post the event announcement that is in question. Note that we didn't even fix typos that are in the announcement!

The ISM poster said, "Pipes is well-known for his virulent anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric, his staunch support of Israel and it's occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and a primary advocate for the war on Iraq."

Since we are anti-oppression collective, and since we have a Palestine page, rather than a middle east page, one could interpret the website collective as being pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. That is probably true for most, but not all, collective members.

Indymedia, from its beginning, has been used as a publicity and news resource for people involved in movements that make noise inside and outside of speeches by people whose policies they (we) don't like. Remember the WTO meeting in Seattle 6 years ago? Most of us didn't go inside the meetings, but a very few did. There's nice video from when some of us went into meetings in Cancun. It was a combination of work that people did in the meetings (like the global south nations in the Cancun meetings), as well as direct and other actions outside, that got our messages across and undermined the ability of people on the inside to believe in and do their work.

I don't know much about Pipes, and I have never tried to contact him, but my guess is that he is not receptive to simple letters, emails, and comments asking him to change his stance.

if he shares an equal contempt for people from other cultures in addition to his bigotry towards Muslims and Japanese people

are whites and Jews the only people who should be spared detention, internment and deportation?

maybe, someone in attendance might ask, and if he attempts to abandon his support for internment revisionism, it would be helpful if someone would step forward and correct the record with his own words


--Richard

Like Hitchens, Horrowitz, David Irving and Michael Savage, Pipes relies almost solely on the controversy surrounding him to promote himself. When Horrowitz last spoke at Berkeley there wasnt a big protest and it got very little publicity so few people actually showed up. He tried to portray the lack of protest as a victory but ultimately these racist rightwing fascists rely on polarization to promote their agenda. If they cant get leftwingers to do this, they get Protest Warriors to show up holding fake leftwing signs (like what you can see on Zombietime's website in about 50% of the pictures) If people didnt debate poeple like Hitchens or protest people like Pipes its likely nobody would ever hear of them, they would lose their audience pull on talkshows and eventually they would give up the racist shtick.

this is something specific to "these racist rightwing fascists" how, exactly?

He didn't say it was specific to them. He's still dead on, though. Truth hurts, doesn't it? Suck it up, fascist

"Pipes obtained a B.A. in history in 1971; his senior thesis was titled A Medieval Islamic Debate: The World Created in Eternity, a study of Al-Ghazali, one of the greatest jurists, theologians and mystical thinkers in the Islamic tradition.

He returned to Harvard in 1973 and obtained a Ph.D. in medieval Islamic history in 1978. His Ph.D. dissertation eventually became his first book, Slave Soldiers and Islam, in 1981. He studied abroad for six years, three of which were spent in Egypt, where he wrote a book on colloquial Egyptian Arabic which was published in 1983. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pipes
-----

What do you bet very few people read any of his stuff before he started sounding like David Duke? The subject without the controversy isnt exactly exciting and it takes stray comments and manufactured outrage to get the publicity Pipes needs to get his pay.

Pipes' song and dance boils down to making extremist statements about Muslims that sound like they could be stright from Mein Kampf and then following up the statements with an explanation of why the words actually mean something different. For example, when Rabin was still alive, Pipes wrote "There can be either an Israel or a Palestine, but not both. To think that two states can stably and peacefully coexist in the small territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is to be either naïve or duplicitous....hose who ask why the Palestinians must be deprived of a state, the answer is simple: grant them one and you set in motion a chain of events that will lead either to its extinction or the extinction of Israel."
You immediately wonder what he is calling for, if there isnt a two state solution what is there? Either he wants a single binational state where Palestinians will be citizens, he wasnt a permanent state of Palestinians as second class Israelis without actual citizenship rights or he wants ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion of the Palestinians.

He states things like "There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces. Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks. Mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches, synagogues, and temples. Muslim schools require increased oversight to ascertain what is being taught to children." which sounds pretty scary if you are a Muslim and guarantees protests by the ACLU and even the ADL . He can follow up such a statement with talk of sleeper cells and how the real enemy is Islamism not Islam but he guarantees protest, and thus publicity and hence readers. If he just stated what he thought without the hate speech mixed in peopel like Steve would find him borihng and would likely never read a word he wrote (and even with the publicity I doubt many rightwingers who love defending Pipes have ever bothered to read a full book by him even if they may purchase one and leave it on the coffee table when their liberal friends come over)

I mean hes hateful, his views are those of someone like David Duke and its scary that he has a following but hes not half as bad as Michael Savage and Savage wasnt even a rightwinger before he realized there was money in hate speech.

How can you take someone like Pipes serious when they write something like:
"Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." (National Review, 11/19/90)
The racism isnt even hidden hidden and seems solely desigend to piss everyone off.

"He didn't say it was specific to them."

nor, apparently, is a vicarious sense of personal superiority.

thanks for the affirmation-- even tho that rarely comes without namecalling round here, does it?

Yes! Quote Pipes out of context! Disrupt his speech to show how you are really fascists, liars and hatemongers! Pipes has a PhD in Islamic history and studied for years in Egypt. Most of you ISM morons can't even spell correctly. Act like the terrorists you support in the Middle East and carry on, make noise and don't allow him to speak. You know why? Pipes will make you all look like idiots. Yes! Call him a racist--it's an easy slogan to call anyone who doesn't support Hamas and Hizbollah and the Ba'athists like the ISMers do! The public of course will be sympathetic to your point of view, because they are impressed by morons who shout and scream in an academic setting as well as threaten violence while they claim to be "peace activists."

You people are a bunch of totalitarian-loving lemmings all runniing over the cliff for overseas dictatorships.Not one of you is worth Dr. Pipes in any way for an intelligent discussion of the matter. ISM meetings have the biggest collection of losers found anywhere in the country.

the hard right is finding it so very easy to play the victim lately. would that have anything to do with plummeting opinion polls on the falling apart of your shoddy show?

"the best is yet to come and babe...." all together now...

The bigger scene they make, the more press coverage we get, and the more publicity for Daniel. The more publicity, the more books he sells, and the more our message gets across.

Its all good.

"Pipes has a PhD in Islamic history"

I don't know why at this point, but I still hope to wake up one day in a world in which people have grown beyond this childish knee-jerk worship of credentials, have realized that 'men of letters' by and large are as mediocre as anybody else -- except when they want to lie. Herding the lemmings along behind a strategic lie is a thing they do with tremendous "authority." This undue social power is their most tradeable service. Guess what power does? For your own good, you should see them as modern "secular" society's priest class, i.e. with a bit of heresy in your heart, because that's exactly what they are. Like the priests of old, your awe of them is a thing they will use against you

I don't say this from ignorance, but from exceptional knowledge. I'm not one of them, but have spent my entire life observing their cult from within. Even when they're bonafide geniuses -- and this is not common -- they are still not demi-gods. Extreme cleverness is not necessarily a virtue. Heroic altruistic character is a seperate variable. By and large even the geniuses are frauds conspiring with other frauds ("colleagues") to market their particular field as the stuff of demi-gods so they can charge more for access to it. To do this they must 1) lie routinely and semi-knowingly and 2) tamper with things best left alone, i.e. overstep responsible limits and abuse their power in order to demonstrate it. Corruption is an insidious all-consuming thing.

Pipes is much worse than most. The priest analogy is most appropriate, because what it does with Pipes is reveal him as an inquisitor, i.e. a ruthless power-hungry ideologue, which is precisely true in his case. Pipes' instrumentality to neocons like Bill Krystal is totally consistent.

And when Dr. B (talk about yer frauds) lauds Pipes' father as "the foremost Harvard Sovietologist of his generation," all this tells me is that Danny Boy inherited his Torquemada complex. Wowee ka-zowee, that IS impressive!

"Yes! Quote Pipes out of context! "

That as kinda my point. If you read most of what Pipes writes and says its boring shit that nobody would read or go to listen to him say. He peppers his talk with Nazi sounding solutions and hate speech to get attention through the controversy. I doubt his fans really care that most of what he says isnt exact new or exciting they just ant to show up for the stuff that pisses off liberals. You can get up in arms about protesters showing up but frankly I wouldnt put it bellow Pipes to pay protesters to show up or leak something even more offensive than usual (maybe defend Japans actions in China during WWII or claim the Armenian genocide never happened) to encourage protesters to show up.

What proof do you have to base your accusations that Pipes is racistly anti-Muslim in a blanket manner and that he wishes to incarcerate and expel _Muslims_ from the US rather than only radical Muslims (Islamists) (bearing in mind they tend to mastermind and/or engage in anti-American terror operations) on?

"There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces. Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks. Mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches, synagogues, and temples. Muslim schools require increased oversight to ascertain what is being taught to children." --The Jerusalem Post, Jan 22, 2003. p.9

"Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." (National Review, 11/19/90)

Holocaust denial bad, Japanese Internment Revision good.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2309

For years, it has been my position that the threat of radical Islam implies an imperative to focus security measures on Muslims. If searching for rapists, one looks only at the male population. Similarly, if searching for Islamists (adherents of radical Islam), one looks at the Muslim population.

And so, I was encouraged by a just-released Cornell University opinion survey that finds nearly half the U.S. population agreeing with this proposition. Specifically, 44 percent of Americans believe that government authorities should direct special attention toward Muslims living in America, either by registering their whereabouts, profiling them, monitoring their mosques, or infiltrating their organizations.

Also encouraging, the survey finds the more people follow TV news, the more likely they are to support these common-sense steps. Those who are best informed about current issues, in other words, are also the most sensible about adopting self-evident defensive measures.

That's the good news; the bad news is the near-universal disapproval of this realism. Leftist and Islamist organizations have so successfully intimidated public opinion that polite society shies away from endorsing a focus on Muslims.

In America, this intimidation results in large part from a revisionist interpretation of the evacuation, relocation, and internment of ethnic Japanese during World War II. Although more than 60 years past, these events matter yet deeply today, permitting the victimization lobby, in compensation for the supposed horrors of internment, to condemn in advance any use of ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion in formulating domestic security policy.

Denying that the treatment of ethnic Japanese resulted from legitimate national security concerns, this lobby has established that it resulted solely from a combination of "wartime hysteria" and "racial prejudice." As radical groups like the American Civil Liberties Union wield this interpretation, in the words of Michelle Malkin, "like a bludgeon over the War on Terror debate," they pre-empt efforts to build an effective defense against today's Islamist enemy.

Fortunately, the intrepid Ms. Malkin, a columnist and specialist on immigration issues, has re-opened the internment file. Her recently published book, bearing the provocative title In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror (Regnery), starts with the unarguable premise that in time of war, "the survival of the nation comes first." From there, she draws the corollary that "Civil liberties are not sacrosanct."

She then reviews the historical record of the early 1940s and finds that:

*

Within hours of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, two American citizens of Japanese ancestry, with no prior history of anti-Americanism, shockingly collaborated with a Japanese soldier against their fellow Hawaiians.
*

The Japanese government established "an extensive espionage network within the United States" believed to include hundreds of agents.
*

In contrast to loose talk about "American concentration camps," the relocation camps for Japanese were "spartan facilities that were for the most part administered humanely." As proof, she notes that over 200 individuals voluntarily chose to move into the camps.
*

The relocation process itself won praise from Carey McWilliams, a contemporary leftist critic (and future editor of the Nation), for taking place "without a hitch."
*

A federal panel that reviewed these issues in 1981-83, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, was, Ms. Malkin explains, "Stacked with left-leaning lawyers, politicians, and civil rights activists – but not a single military officer or intelligence expert."
*

The apology for internment by Ronald Reagan in 1988, in addition to the nearly $1.65 billion in reparations paid to former internees was premised on faulty scholarship. In particular, it largely ignored the top-secret decoding of Japanese diplomatic traffic, codenamed the MAGIC messages, which revealed Tokyo's plans to exploit Japanese-Americans.

Ms. Malkin has done the singular service of breaking the academic single-note scholarship on a critical subject, cutting through a shabby, stultifying consensus to reveal how, "given what was known and not known at the time," President Roosevelt and his staff did the right thing.

She correctly concludes that, especially in time of war, governments should take into account nationality, ethnicity, and religious affiliation in their homeland security policies and engage in what she calls "threat profiling." These steps may entail bothersome or offensive measures but, she argues, they are preferable to "being incinerated at your office desk by a flaming hijacked plane."

He is clearly a right wing racist piece of shit.

" Ms. Malkin has done the singular service of breaking the academic single-note scholarship on a critical subject,"

That a good point. There is another motivation to say really controversial things and defend blatant racism by claiming certain groups are more prone to bad things. That motivation is academic recognition. You dont get famous for taking stands others agree with; you only get famous in academia for going out on a limb (and in a nonscience field where you cant be proved right or wrong the risk is just that peopel may hate you but you can rely on academic freedom to keep your job). Does Malkin really think Japaneese intenment was just and we shld do stuff like that again? Who know. Its likely she diagrees with it but figurs that she is unlikely to wing peopel over to the argument so at least it gets her name out there to state it.

The problem with hate speech these days is there is so much of it out there that people are becoming immune to it so a lot of those on AM radio are starting to get more and more out there. M Savage yesterday was going off about how nobody on welfare should be allowed to vote. Tomorrow he may start calling for the execution of all gays an lesbians and the nuking of Meca (he already called for that though). Some less intelligent listeners may actually believe the shit and thats what makes it dangerous but the popularity of the genre is solely based on the controversy it generates so it doesnt really help much to protest (think of what happened with "The Passion Of The Christ" which probably got more free publicity than ay movie in history).

One thing that is bothersome though is that the psychology of people who believe in hateful things makes it hard to confront them. Do you not allow David Duke or Malkin to speak on your campus and risk making their supporters think that what they have to say must be important if you dont want them to hear it? Do you generate free publicity for hate groups by organizing protests to events that dont have the resources to promote themselves. Do you legitimize the arguments by responding or make it sound like the only complaints are PC in nature by denouncing and refusing to respond?

Nobody should have to argue as to why rounding up all Japanese Americans, aborting all Black fetuses, expelling all Palestinians, or denying to vote to nonwhites is wrong since the moral argument against racism is exactly that (a moral argument based of a moral view that racism is bad) I could write as essay as to why killing all men would reduce crime and put in facts about the higher rate of violence by men than women, but the correct way to respond wouldnt be to try to argue with the facts (perhaps more men do commit acts of violent crime) it would be to ignore the argument as specifically designed to provoke (since the moral argument against killing all males doesnt really need to be argued since anyone who claims to disagree with it is likely just trying to offend you and doesnt believe it themselves) .

The key is that all speech- including unpopular speech- should be protected.

Do you not allow David Duke or Malkin to speak on your campus and risk making their supporters think that what they have to say must be important if you dont want them to hear it?

Or do you show up, having read his material, and ask direct, intelligent questions that point him out for what he truely is? We need to distinguish what is truely hate speech from what is dis-information.

Do you generate free publicity for hate groups by organizing protests to events that dont have the resources to promote themselves.

A protest or any kind of publicity will always do that. You are right- no one ever got reknowned repeating the status quo. Finklesteins comments on Dershowitz have contributed more to Derrshowitz selling books than his reputation alone. And no doubt, the reverse is true as well


Do you legitimize the arguments by responding or make it sound like the only complaints are PC in nature by denouncing and refusing to respond?

Nothing is legitimized by questioning. To some extent the audience may be true believers- but there might also be people who are gathering information or who are undecided. Asking intelligent questions clues people in to the other side of the story. It encourages independent thinking. Thats what we need more of nowadays. It is important to elevate the quality of any debate.
Chanting, noise making and taunting do nothing to elevate the quality of discourse

Why was my post removed?

And although that PhD-basher assails me for no reason (I have four Ivy League degrees, including a PhD), he does have a point - many PhD are frauds in the sense he describes. Of ocurse, thsi is sheer hypocrisy to point this out with PhD you disagree with and laud PhD you agree with.

A PhD is only as good as the granting institution and more importantly the supervising advisor. Many PhD in the social sciences in Europe are worth very little, and PhD in third world universities are even worse. Japanese, top US, top European, Taiwanese (not mainland), Australian (some) are worth something - the rest I'd rather have a good US BA to work with.

I guess your "intimate knowledge" comes from being some social science ABD grad student, or some clerical worker (photocopying), who knows. Humour me - how do you speak from "knowledge", non academic man?

The fact remains: Daniel Pipes has forgotten more than you will ever know about this topic ( he and I are on a cordial email basis).

He is right on with his analysis of Islamic terror threats. And his father was (OK one of) the greatest Sovietologist of his generation.

no one cares about your PhD

though you must love to tell people about it at cocktail parties

you're obviously an academic loser if you waste your time here defending racists

the lone voice?

that's a laugh

give up your nukes, and endless US charity, encourage the media to cover the palestinians besides the few who actually attack israel, and then we can talk about lone vices

Door #1: We can ignore you OR
Door #2: A half dozen of us, whoever we can find who isn't lulled into complacency by the dominent culture and who is willing to miss "Lost" can "counterprotest " your lies. And then there's
Door #3

In case you haven't realized, "we" were at Finkelstein, "we" were at Pappe, "we" were at the various ISM events 'round town. We are there to document what we hear- to "bear witness". We don't interfere with the speakers. We've never interfered with the speakers . To "us" this is about the responsibilities of free speech. All speech must be protected- not just popular speech.
"Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom." (Cardozo)

So help me, though- I'm willing to change my ground rules re: moral high ground if you start trampling people's rights. And you seem willing. Are you willing to face the consequences? Are you willing to change the rules of engagement?

"blah blah blah, encourage the media to cover the palestinians besides the few who actually attack israel, and then we can talk about lone vices"

Honest Reporting and CAMERA - those supposedly racist Zionist pro-Bush media watchdog organs you so detest but which are nonetheless far more honest in their appraisal of the media's coverage of the conflict than your anti-Israel sources like Allison Weird - have established that the media amply covers the Palestinian side (in no way limited to the many who attack Israeli targets) on most aspects but often omits to extend the same criterion of fairness to the Israeli side.

[He is right on with his analysis of Islamic terror threats. And his father was (OK one of) the greatest Sovietologist of his generation.]

Odd, Pipes the elder was part of the "Team B" exercise that grossly exaggerated the Soviet threat during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Later, he got caught publishing a hysterical opinion piece continuing to hype the Soviet threat, as now personified by Gorbachev, less than a week before the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

As for Pipes the younger, I wouldn't call what he does analysis, but he does do a good job of scapegoating entire groups of people based upon either their ethnicity or religion.

Just curious: did anyone ask the question that I suggested? Does he believe that whites and Jews the only people that shouldn't be subjected to detention, internment and deportation?

--Richard

Just curious: did anyone ask the question that I suggested? Does he believe that whites and Jews the only people that shouldn't be subjected to detention, internment and deportation?

And when did you stop beating your wife, Richard? Are you going tonight? Why don't you ask him?

[?
by ? Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005 at 10:27 AM

Just curious: did anyone ask the question that I suggested? Does he believe that whites and Jews the only people that shouldn't be subjected to detention, internment and deportation?

And when did you stop beating your wife, Richard? Are you going tonight? Why don't you ask him?]

. . . . . I've never "beat my wife" in regard to publicly expressing bigoted views, as Pipes has done

and, as an aside, it is worth noting that this is a "non-denial denial"

he hates Muslims and he hates Japanese-Americans

what other people of color does he equally detest?


--Richard

Objection . Assumes facts not in evidence.

He hates terrorists (don't we all?) and he published excerpts from a book that stated that perhaps internment was the best option under the circumstances during WWII. So where does it say he hates people of color?
Maybe you don't get an answer to your loaded question because its more satisfing to ignore baiters that to engage them.
Damn! If only I had impulse control!

If you think locking up entire populations fo a particlular ethnic group ever is justified, then you are blinded by the propaganda machine.

"If you think locking up entire populations fo a particlular ethnic group ever is justified"

Moslems aren't an ethnic group. Islam is an ideology wearing a mantle of religion. Just lock up moslems living in Dar al Harb.

But that's another topic. I should have said ethnic/religious/ect. groups. Entire populations. Like the Japanese (the camps) that this sack of human refuse Pipes advocates.

[He hates terrorists (don't we all?) and he published excerpts from a book that stated that perhaps internment was the best option under the circumstances during WWII.]

. . . . hates "terrorists" if they are Muslim and hates Japanese Americans because they fought for decades to establish that there was no basis for their internment other than bigotry, making it harder, as he has openly acknowledged, to surveil, detain and incarcerate Muslims

thus, because he hates them for what they are, Muslim and Asian, he's willing to exploit war and terror as a justification for mass internment, surveillance, detention and deportation

by the way, interesting effort to shade the truth here, Pipes didn't just publish "excerpts from a book that stated that perhaps internment was the best option under the circumstances during WWII', he praised it

but, I can see why you would be sensitive on this point, because, after all, you wouldn't want your Japanese American and Asian friends to know that Pipes supports treating them as badly as he would treat Muslims

kinda hard to built a coalition that way

which gets back to my original question: are whites and Jews the only people that he believes shouldn't be subject to detention, internment and deportation? if so, why?


--Richard

I counted 6 of us. What was that all about?

Well, that's a good thing.
When David Horowitz returned to Berkeley and liberals just ignored him, while the young republicans assumed that they would show up to boo him or something, they just looked ridiculous with all their security. The earlier time he had gone through extreme efforts to attract people, and still no one interrupted his talk, and he was only asked a challenging question by Joseph Anderson at the end, and went back to write in his column that the Berkeley libs had attacked him. When Pipes came, I was showing around my friend who was accepted to civil engineering but didn't come here because he didn't like the situation. We went to this because it was the event that evening, and it was ridiculous when these students running the event were demanding to search my bag and jacket pockets first at one door and again at a second door, so I just slipped by when they weren't focusing for the 2nd one. Anyway, Pipes is pretty rude - there's no dobut about that. He seems really arrogant, and he sneers, and seems like you wouldn't want to be part of his family.

But with all the emails exchanged about disrupting the talk- no one showed up. Maybe its better- less free publicity for him, but it makes me wonder where we're at. There was no organization, no plan, nothing.
Win some. lose some, I guess.

You have to actually pick up the phone and call people and get committments from them...people are too used to e-mail and its doesnt feel urgent...phone calls do

I hadn't heard Pipes said this, and I'm grateful to Richard for telling me. Pipes' motive is basic to pro-Israel public manipulation, which trades on the 'uniqueness' of The Holocaust, i.e. the Jewish monopoly on victimhood. To create and maintain that 'uniqueness' in the minds of the credulous unwashed, every opportunity is taken to remind them of The Holocaust's supreme evilness, while other analogous episodes -- the Native American genocide, the Armenian genocide, the Japanese internment -- are grossly trivialized. The excerpt of Pipes' discussion of Japanese internment (Malkin etc.) is typical. The object, clearly, is to transfer this apathy to the reader, who presumably won't understand they've been exposed to bias (there's yer telltale arrogance again).

History has forever been 'instrumentalized,' i.e. its actuality perverted into manipulative mythologies by powerful parties with sordid ulterior motives, and the instrumentalization of the Holocaust is very likely the most blatant, disgusting example of our time.

It's very important to be both conscious and vigilant about these goings on, because there's an awful lot of fake history being written now from this viewpoint. Often it's subtle enough that if you're not vigilant the disinformation will slip by you and take root.

For example: a while ago I read a book titled "Ishi's Brain" written by Duke University Anthropologist Orin Starn. Ishi was the famous "last wild Indian," captured in central California in 1911. He was taken to San Francisco to live under the care of anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, whose daughter Theodora wrote a popular book about Ishi and about the wanton slaughter of California Indians by the '49ers. Theodora's book made Ishi a lasting symbol of **America's** holocaust. You know, the one we really SHOULD obsess about

Pipes and his co-conspirators therefore don't like Ishi, and this is where Starn comes in. His book is an artfully constructed attack on every aspect of Dorothea Kroeber's credibility. Along the way he resorts to every tactic short of petty slander, pointing out even amazingly trivial errors like misspellings of family names. Simultaneously he constructs a classic disinterested account of "what really happened" to Ishi's tribe and all others in California, strategically diminishing the impact of Theodora Kroeber's original narrative. Every point of ambiguity he finds in Theodora's book, no matter how niggling, is another golden opportunity to throw out any related account of atrocities. This opportunistic dishonesty is the signature of an academic fraud with a hidden agenda

I know for a fact that his revision of the California tribes' slaughter is criminally full of shit, diminishing its scale and horror so grossly as to perpetrate a second genocide by killing even the memory of the first one. As he does this, he regularly drops the telltale apologist line "I think it was horrible and don't mean to trivialize it in any way..." Uh-huh, Starn, but you DID, so now you're just adding a lie to your first crime. He does manage to slip in several totally irrelevant references to Hitler, the Nazis, and The Holocaust though, i.e. the "gold standard" of genocides, against which that of California's natives becomes quite trivial -- by his reckoning

The capper is Starn's index, which makes no mention of "genocide" "massacre" and "slavery" as they pertain to the Indians, even though these important relevant subjects DO IN FACT APPEAR in the text. Instead the index directs the reader to his TOTALLY IRRELEVANT discussion of "Nazism." Go figure.

It's a subtle point, but I think it speaks volumes about where Starn (and his publisher) is coming from. My point in bringing up "Ishi's Brain" is this: I spotted this subtext because I'm acutely aware of the pro-Israel crowd's agenda to minimize the Native American genocide, largely from having read Ward Churchill's "A Little Matter of Genocide." If I had not been, Starn's bullshit would have gone right by me. These assholes are re-writing history to their own self-interested specifications, just like the CIA did as it subsidized thousands of "historical" titles a generation ago.

If you stay alert to this sort of thing, you'll spot these bigots even when they're being much too crypto to reveal themselves in other ways. And you'll be alarmed by how pervasive their offerings are in bookstores today

I got roped into reading another one, Kevin Baker's 'Dreamland,' by an orgasmic NPR review. Pointer: if NPR is shooting buckets of jizz over a movie, book, etc., consider yourself forewarned

Stop by the Holocaust Center of Northern California- they are having a program this month on the Armenian genocide.

Their mission statement says :"By showing the link between the Holocaust and contemporary issues the Center attempts to put an end to indifference, oppression, hate crimes and the recurrence of genocide. "

The Jewish people , having learned what the world is capable of , are more than ever commited to the concept of "Never again".

The vast majority of Jews came to America well after the destruction of the first peoples and the confiscation of their lands. You claim " I'm acutely aware of the pro-Israel crowd's agenda to minimize the Native American genocide..."
I fail to see a connection. Can you site historic examples (no, not "quotes" from Ward Churchill- but concrete examples), of what you claim?

I'll let the person you commented back to respond about Native Americans but Pipes' racism is pretty transparent. You can argue that what he advocates has other motivations than racism but the tone clearly conveys that he himself is a racist:

"Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." (National Review, 11/19/90)
is pretty bad

and so is
""There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched"
(from The Jerusalem Post, Jan 22, 2003. p.9)

His racism may stem from his being a Jewish nationalist but only in so much as one can attribute the anomosity between Greeks and Turks to be due to Greek and Turkish nationalism (its possible to find nationalist Greeks who dont hate Turks but there is something about nationalism that seems to demand an enemy to demonize)

As for the Hollocaust, I think that the meaning has unfortunately changed in recent years (perhaps since 9/11 even). I visited the Holocaust museum in DC years ago and I think they had a good exhibit about ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia there at the time. The message of the museum was "never again" meaning that the world should never again sit by and let attrocities happen. I think the conflict in the Middle East has given a new meaning to the Holocaust's remembrance that is closer to how other groups remember past attrocities committed against them, with "never again" becoming a nationalist call to protect "our" people in a very restrictive sense with an almost "ends justifies the means" feel to the statement.

I tend to be very weary of anyone who likes Finkelstein, but do think his books should be read by people working to remind people about the Holocaust since its worth a little introspection (even though when read by others I dont doubt that his books have a very different meaning) I guess the point Im trying to make is that when the Holocaust become a message to "protect our people" rather than protect all people, its meaning is debased and will eventually lose all resonance.

Anyways, I hate to have strayed from the main topic of this thread which I guess is that Pipes is a racist and is dangerous in that people may listen to him and support some of his extreme positions vis-a-vis the treatment of Muslim and Arab minorities in the US, Europe and Israel. I guess the main tie-in though between Pipes and the decline in social justice focus of those fighting antiSemitism is perhaps most clear in the ADL's endorsement of Pipes when he was nominated for a position by Bush ( http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Mise_00/4342_00.htm ). I guess the ADL wrote that in 2003 when the fearmongering of 9/11 was still strong but I hope they realize what a significant blow that endorsement meant to the ADL's ability to fight neoNazis and antiSemities. While there may be a small group of people who just care about discrimination against one specific ethnic group most of those working to fight racism and discrimination want to protect all groups and the ADL's endorsement of someone who has made positive statements about Japanese enternment and has called for the reduction of civil rights for Muslims in the US makes it hard for the ADL to work with others.

It's also worth noting that much of the work the ADL supported Pipes for doing was actualy fake. His "Campus Watch" organization may document some real antiSemitism but they have also manufactured some either wittingly or unwittingly. A lot of their complaints remind me of the site Zombietime ( http://www.zombietime.com/hall_of_shame/ ); the antiSemitism in some of the signs is horrible but exactly who is carrying the signs? The guy with the "Avenge Yassin" and the guy with the "Fuck Middle America" signs are both people Im pretty sure Ive seen protesting for Israel at other protests and the top sign is very suspicious and seems much more designed to promote the war (by equating opposition to it with antiSemitism) than likely to be a ral antiSemitic antiwar sign. Ive been to a few Palestine protests and have seen some antiSemitism by a few antiIsrael protesters but for the most part they are crazy loner types who everyone else tries to prevent from comming to the protests, not representatives of the views of the majority of the protesters.

I guess the problem Im pointing to with Campus Watch and even the ADL is that the focus on antiSemitism can at times seem opportunistic. Attacks on France for antiSemitism after 2003 seems more about right-wing proIsrael supporters wanting to link issues than about a continuation of the real concerns about antiSemitism before 2003. Demonization of antiWar groups as antiSemitic (when in many cities a majority of those participating and many leading antiwar critics are Jewish) also seemed to be an attempt by the right-wing to link issues to create more support for the war (or at least try to keep moderate-left Jews away from the protests or even have them confront the protesters and create polarization even when the focus at some of the protests on Palestinians was minimal). Cindy Sheehan is now being demonized as antiSemitic for moderately antiIsrael quotes that were probably manufactured by Christoper HItchens. When right-wing groups use antiSemitism as a weapon and ligitmate groups fighting antiSemitism (like the ADL) start going along with it the dangers are greatest in terms of the real growth of antiSemitism. Ive noticed the ADL is now shifting to confront the religious right (with which Pipes is closely allied) but its hopefully not too late since they have alienated a lot of those they will need to work with when issues like open promotion of Christianity at public schools start to show up again.

I have heard pro-Zionists here talk about opinions that "cross the line" from what would be deemed, one supposes, as legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and practices to outright anti-semitism for its own sake, regardless of the facts in dispute that pertain to these policies and practices.

For the sake of argument, let's say that this occurs, at least in the judgment of the pro-Zionists who raise the objections.

Therefore, for the sake of clarity, it is incumbent on these pro-Zionists to provide an outline or guide regarding what they believe does constitute the boundaries of legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and practices, and what constitutes "crossing the line" into Jew hatred for its own sake.

Can you pro-Zionists provide such guidelines for us?

I think we all know the answer. The answer in the rabid, fanatical zionist's mind is that "anti-semitism" is the default argument used in their futile attempt to discredit ANY criticism of Israel..... Sad but true.

How can a nation where 20% of the population is not Jewish be a "Jewish nation?" Isn't this a misnomer? If Israel is a democracy, it is only a "Jewish nation" in a figurative sense. It is the same thing for someone to proclaim that the United States is a "Christian nation." Granted, the majority of its citizens are Christians, but it can only be called a "Christian nation" in a figurative sense.

Would it not, then, be narrow minded and incorrect to insist that Israel is a "Jewish nation" in a literal sense, just as it would be to call the United States a "Christian nation" in a literal sense?

They should be held to the highest of standards, as the claim to be a 'democratic society'--this neccessitates that they be held to the brightest and most glaring of lights. This means stringent transparency, criticism and demanding of accountability.
Except when this is done, the fanatics come out in full force defending and (albeit unsuccessfully here, which I'm sure is frustrating after cowing the mainstream media quite nicely) shouting down critics with false accusations of anti-semitism.

"disingenuous". And evidence of this is where?
Impossibly high? Busllshit. We rip the U.S. and its' leaders to shreds on their actions and policies, too. You are the one with the persecution complex.
Therefore, for the sake of clarity, it is incumbent on these pro-Zionists to provide an outline or guide regarding what they believe does constitute the boundaries of legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and practices, and what constitutes "crossing the line" into Jew hatred for its own sake.
We are still waiting for something other than your extremely biased-fanatic, vague measuring stick to ensure that we aren't crossing the alledged (because, I personally, am not aniti-semetic) line of anti-semitism.

"ignoring all other countries in similiar circumstances is likewise anti-semitic"

Except there are few other countries in the exact same circumstances. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (where those living in the occupied areas have not had any realy citizenship ina country for decades) has few parallels. PLUS for those in the US concerned about Israel's occupation there is the added issues of US aid. And of course there is the relationship between the Israel-Palestinian conflict and other wars in the region ... Israel may not have lead to the war in Iraq but it does account for much of the hatred of the US in the Middle East....

Aside form the occupation one also has the issue of Israel's nukes (which should be of the same concern to everyone as India and Pakistan's nukes).