Robert Finally gets to the point

There's a book review on the Engage website, written by Zionist sociology lecturer, Robert Fine, about a book called The Definition of Anti-Semitism by a Kenneth Marcus.  Now I'm guessing that a book on antisemitism praised by Robert Fine must conflate antisemitism and anti-Zionism.  And look at this:

Marcus endorses the view that if in the past the most dangerous antisemites wanted to make the world Judenrein, free of Jews, perhaps today the most dangerous antisemites want to make the world Judenstaatrein, free of a Jewish state.

There you go.  It took him several paragraphs to get to the point he was bound to make but he gets there towards the end.

As it happens, Fine is wrong here.  Judenstaat doesn't actually mean Jewish State, it means Jews' State, ie, a state specially for the world's Jews as in The State of Israel.  I always suspect that when Zionists call Israel, a Jewish state they are making out it just happens to have a Jewish majority but the difference between Jewish State and Jews' State is significant.

Clearly a state that is for the world's Jews is discriminatory at best and may even have to tinker with the "demographics" like by ethnically cleansing some people (non-Jews) and giving privileged access to others (Jews). Opposition to such a state is anti-racist, not antisemitic, but for Fine and this Marcus chap, it is the most dangerous form of antisemitism. Why?  Well, I didn't get that far.  I just wanted to point out that here is a prominent academic having yet another go at conflating the perfectly legitimate demand for the abolition of Jewish supremacist statehood with racism against Jews.

I'm starting to get nervous about what horrors the racist war criminals of the illegitimate Zionist entity are planning to inflict on the Palestinians sometime soon.  It's usually at times like those that the Zios crank up the false allegations of antisemitism.  Or maybe it's just that intellectually dishonest chancers like Fine have devoted so much of their time and energy and staked so much of their professional reputations on this bogus conflation they don't know how to do anything else.

Robert Fine, BDS and the right of reply

I have written about this Robert Fine character before here.  He's a sociology professor at Warwick University in the UK. 

He had a piece in the European Sociological Association newsletter some time ago where he flagrantly misrepresented the EUMC working definition of antisemitism and likened its opponents to the racists who opposed the Race Relations Act back in the 1960s and 70s.

I was particularly angry and perplexed about how so dishonest an operator could get his dishonesty published without caveat or counter-argument.  Now, thanks to Ben White, I know.

See Middle East Monitor where Ben is writing about how Robert Fine was recently humiliated in a debate on BDS when his anti-BDS argument presumably contributed to the fact that the votes for and against BDS moved from 53-27 to 68-23.  Not only is Ben pointing up Fine's defeat, he is also pointing out how the Israel advocacy crowd are promoting Fine's argument in the absence of counter-argument:

This is not the first time that Fine has embarrassed himself with a disingenuous anti-boycott argument. In the Winter 2012 issue of the European Sociologist, the newsletter of the European Sociological Association (ESA), Fine repeated the same misrepresentations and omissions.

When I approached the editors about contributing a response piece, the offer was welcomed with open arms. My finalised, editor-approved piece was sent to Fine to give him the opportunity to comment -and then, silence. Months later, the editor informed me that "the editorial committee have chosen not to publish your contribution as it does not meet the standards accepted by our organisation". The co-chair of the ESA's Committee for Publications? Robert Fine.

So that's how he avoids counter-argument.  He co-chairs or advisorily edits the sites and publications that publish his disingenuous hasbara.

Or maybe not.  His losing argument has been posted in two parts to the Sociology@Warwick blog. (Part II here).  There is a comment space beneath the posts and I have tried posting one beneath each part thus:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Here’s Jonathan Rosenhead’s argument in favour of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the State of Israel:
http://www.bricup.org.uk/news/RosenheadLeeds.html
Here is Ben White’s corrective to Robert Fine’s argument:
http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/debate/10722-losing-the-debate-boycott-opponents-rely-on-legal-threats-
Here’s something by me on Robert Fine’s approach to these matters:
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/academics-for-israel-robert-fine-and.html

 Fine's piece on Sociology@Warwick was actually posted by,  alexttsmith or Alexander Smith, who tweets here, https://twitter.com/AlexTTSmith. Robert Fine appears to neither blog nor tweet. Mr Smith's tweets are protected but I have tried tweeting him to get him to approve my links to some counter-argument against Fine's stuff:

.@AlexTTSmith Please approve comments here http://t.co/MAwSAUdgmB & here http://t.co/RdhUgqbzpz Robert Fine's argument seems to be protected
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) April 5, 2014

Let's see how it goes.  I ought to say, I don't even know if Mr Smith is the moderator but given Fine seems only to post in places where he can't be argued against I don't hold out much hope for even links to counter-argument to appear where he has chosen his own stuff to appear.

UPDATE (10:42 6 April 2014):  Sociology@Warwick  has now approved the comments linking to criticisms of Robert Fine's two parter.  I wonder if the European Sociological Association newsletter will ever do the same.  Anyway, many thanks to whoever tweets at @SocioWarwick.

Academics for Israel Part 2 - Robert Fine and the EUMC working definition

This is part II in what I am trying to make a weekly series on Israel advocates in academia.  I intend to post a link to the previous Academics for Israel post at the bottom of the latest one, but I might forget. 

I think the series is an interesting thing to do in itself because here we have people whose career commitment is to the "disinterested pursuit of truth" (or something like that) who often appear to have to bend the truth, ignore it or flagrantly misrepresent it in order to support a worldview based on prejudice rather than reality.  But also, it is quite rare for critical comments to be accepted by Israel advocacy blogs so this is a chance to make sure that comments are not wasted.

Having said that, Robert Fine is not actually a blogger himself or I am sure he would have a Normblog profile and he doesn't.

Robert Fine is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.  He has a long standing relationship with the Engage site and like all zionist academics lately he is willing to jump through hoops for the EUMC working definition of antisemitism which has been formulated to make criticism of the State of Israel nigh on impossible. He often comes across as a nice chap but the smears he is willing to hurl at critics of Israel are as unpleasant and disingenuous as any emanating from the zionist camp.

Here he is on the Engage website "On doing the sociology of antisemitism".  The piece first appeared in the newsletter of the European Sociological Association.  It is largely a self-indulgent resumé of his academic career but I noticed his mention of the EUMC working definition of antisemitism and the way he misrepresented it. I stopped reading after that and left a comment that never made it past the moderator.

Anyway, here he is on the EUMC working definition:

The working definition on antisemitism put forward by the European Union Monitoring Commission is one attempt to deal with this issue.  According to this definition the following cases of ‘criticism’ of Israel may, depending on context, be examples of antisemitism: the nazification of Israel (e.g. when it is said that Jews treat Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews), the pathologisation of Jews (e.g. when it is said that as a result of the Holocaust Jews have become indifferent to the suffering of other peoples), the use of old antisemitic tropes (e.g. when it is said that Zionists engage in a world conspiracy to protect Israel or that Israeli forces steal the body parts of Arabs), or more simply the erasure of any distinction between state and civil society (e.g. when it is said that all Jews in Israel are responsible for the policies pursued by the government).

We may or may not agree on particular cases, but what is clear is that some forms of ‘criticism’ lean toward antisemitism more than others.  The systematic treatment of Israel as culpable by standards that are not applied equally to other states is another case in point. 

There were already two comments when I posted mine.  Here's the first from SarahAB from Harry's Place:

Sarah AB Says:
December 21, 2012 at 1:10 pm

An excellent post. Just one example of the way in which antisemitism is sometimes shown to be ‘replaced’ by Islamophobia is that UCU Holocaust wall chart.

I critiqued her own promotion of the working definition here. Most of her comment refers to something in the article that I didn't even read but her description of the piece as "excellent" says it all about both him and her. I would guess that she could and would have described the piece as excellent even if she hadn't read it.

Anyway, knowing that Engage tends to restrict comments to its own zionist faithful I didn't want to get in too deep but here goes:

levi9909 Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation. [It has now been deleted altogether]
December 22, 2012 at 1:29 pm

Robert Fine’s section on the EUMC working definition is misleading and contentious.

He claims that the working definition was “put forward by the European Union Monitoring Commission”. It was actually put to them not by them. It was put to them by the American Jewish Committee who tacked on the “context” proviso as an afterthought because without it the working definition was an obvious case of preventing criticism of Israel by the bad faith allegation of antisemitism. This site shows the genealogy of this AJC document.

He rewords the “examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel” to validate the “context” proviso and yet the working definition itself lists examples which are unambiguously antisemitic regardless of context together with examples which are not so. For example, which context makes the denial of the right of Jews to self-determination and statehood antisemitic? And which context makes “holding the Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel” not antisemitic? Clearly, a state specially for Jews is a racist endeavour as surely as holding all Jews responsible for it is antisemitic.

The working definition is itself antisemitic in that it essentialises Jews as zionists, ie, people who support the idea that Jews are a case for self-determination and statehood.

You simply cannot establish a principle whereby Jews qualify for self-determination and statehood which is consistent with the right of nations to self-determination. Just consider the case of, say, France and the French state and people. The French are the people of France. The French state is their state. You can be French if you are Jewish and French if you are not Jewish. The Jews are not the people of a specific country. Israel is the state of the Jewish people, You cannot be Jewish if you are not Jewish. Ergo, a Jewish state is inherently discriminatory, ie, racist.

Robert Fine also seems to have ignored the fact that the working definition asserts that Israel is a “democratic nation” and seeks to forbid specialist campaigning against Israel even by its victims. And yet Israel is unique in that it defines itself as the state of an entire ethno-religious non-territorial identity group most of whom don’t live there and it has displaced most of the people who come from there. It also receives more aid from abroad than any other country. Demands made of Israel tend to focus on where it differs from other states, not where it is similar. I know of no other “democratic nation” whose state exist on the basis of a recent, current and on-going campaign of colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing facilitated by an array of discriminatory laws and underpinned by a self-definition as the state for an ethno-religious community.

I find it profoundly disturbing that there are so many academics putting so much energy into defending such a bogus document as the EUMC working definition.

Fine has been an advisory editor of Engage before it dispensed with the need for such advisers or editors so I don't know if he saw my comment and I don't know of any forum where the piece has appeared where I could be sure he would read it.

Robert Fine is one of many academics for Israel who are willing to cast logic and truth aside for the sake of zionism and studiously avoid any situation where they might have to answer for themselves. He is a member of the board of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA), whose page on the JSA website reads like a who's who of islamophobia.  They are the people who organised the conference which witnessed the contrived walkout and non-walkout by various UK zionists which I wrote about just recently.

I'm not suggesting that Fine is an islamophobe but for one with such a cultivated sense of outrage over antisemitism he is none too sensitive about the islamophobic company he keeps.