We Like That Old-Time Rock ‘N’ Roll
Posted on April 14th, 2007 by Gavin M.
Shorter Martin of Solomonia
Anti-Semitism Lives Among Academics
- As this editorial shows, critics of my work in eradicating the International Muslim Bacillus are secretly Nazis.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
I am not familiar with the work of Kaplan and Small. However, would it be wrong for me to suggest that the survey was something along the lines of “Do you agree with Israel’s current policy in the west bank?”
“Uh, now that you mention it, no…”
“So how many copies of mein kampf do you own anyways?”
Ummm… I don’t have access to the Journal of Conflict Resolution (where Kaplan and Small published their study) from where I’m at, but there’s a .pdf of a draft version here. Here’s the research questions they asked:
Basically, if your answers were “agree a lot”, “Israelis”, “Intentionally target civilians” and “yes”, you were extremely anti-Israel, and 56% likely to also express strongly anti-Semitic statements (measured by agreement with a number of broad sterotypical statements about Jews).
So really, the statement in the editorial that: “And as researchers Edward Kaplan and Charles Small have demonstrated in Europe, anti-Israel sentiment “consistently predictsâ€? the probability that an individual is also anti-Semitic…” is fairly misleading, since stating it like that suggests a likelihood that a critic of Israel will be anti-Semitic, rather having than a less than 50/50 shot of anti-semitism (even in the extremely critical cases).
Ummm… this is a long comment, and I don’t have our beloved preview button, so I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that I haven’t screwed something up very badly.
Marita, I thank you for the the link. It was an interesting read. I never know when a wingnut cites a survey whether it is legit or the byproduct of some AEI style think tank. (And yes sometimes, I am way too tired to google and risk end ing up at some crazy place like ajacksonian)
Again there is this weird correlation that equates disagreement with the policies of the Israeli government with being anti-Israel. And the surprising lack of interest on why someone might feel that Israel is say an apartheid state.
Hey, Doc Marita, you don’t need a damn preview button, you’ve got brains. An admirable quality, if I might say.
The current Israeli government is a harsher, cheaper, angrier, more ideological version of the neocons. They are perpetuating their power by eschewing peace and demonizing the palestinians, all while hyping the nonexistent “threat” to Israel from Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and the Palestinians themselves. The Israelis are not bad people. I’ve talked to many of them, they don’t like the hard edge the Likudniks take towards the Palestinians. They don’tlike their government assasinating specific people in their name. They don’t like the unfair misery the Israeli military is visiting upon the Palestinian population, most of whom would just like to raise their family and be left alone, just like most Israelis. It is most certainly NOT anti semitism to say the government of Israel is evil, mendacious, corrupt and racist, much like the current governent of the US. It is not anti semitism to say that the Israeli policies toward their neighbors is intended to create a long-term threat against Israel that can be used politically to empower the people in power, and marginalize the people who would challenge that power. And it is NOT anti semitism to speak out and say that we can live in peace, fairly sharing land, water, labor and resources without butchering one another. But you’d never know it by listening to the weak cowards who know their key to retaining power and weath is perpetual warfare….
mikey
Well, they do have the correlation that the higher the number of those statements you answer in an anti-Israel fashion, the more likely you were to also be anti-Semitic, but is that really a shock? Of course the anti-Semites are included in the group that indexes out as anti-Israel. Someone would have to be a pretty shoddy anti-Semite to support Israel.
I think the important thing to take from this is that a majority of the people who were critical of Israel in some fashion were not anti-Semites by these measures. Doesn’t really make a good argument for those who want to paint everyone critical of Israel’s policies as anti-Semites though, does it?
As a side note, this study seems a little fuzzy (I should say, with an apology to the social scientists here, that most social sciences studies I read seem a little fuzzy). One thing I was curious about was how well the statements surveyed, particularly the ones used to measure anti-Israel sentiment, were translated. If they did the survey in 10 countries, it was undoubtedly translated into at least a few languages. I would think that the fideltity of the translation could have a very significant effect on the answers you got.
Also, worth noting that their data was from a survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League. I don’t have any qualms with the ADL, and I don’t think that it invalidates the data, but it’s always worth considering where the money comes from. It can introduce both conscious and unconscious bias into data.
Wow, thanks Mikey. I’m sure I’ll say something completely dumbassed in the near future to make you regret the compliment though. 🙂
I’ve actually had the same experience that you have, with the Israelis I know. They’re generally much more moderate and much more compassionate towards the Palestinians than the vehemently pro-Israel Americans I’ve talked to. It’s kind of a strange phenomenon.
I’ve actually had the same experience that you have, with the Israelis I know. They’re generally much more moderate and much more compassionate towards the Palestinians than the vehemently pro-Israel Americans I’ve talked to. It’s kind of a strange phenomenon.
In some ways it is strange, in some ways it is not. Though I’ve only met a handful of Israelis, most of them have lived along side of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. They see them as people and not as some abstract “problem” that needs to be dealt with.
Though I am not as wise or as well traveled as I would like, I know this truth: That a lot of the world’s problems come from when we stop seeing other people as people just like us and start seeing them as obstacles that need to be “resolved.”
No, its not, and I’d say its a flawed study because its conclusion is based on a categorization error. Its like saying that having four limbs and a head is a predictor for being a giraffe.
I left this for Solomonia, since deleted, I’m sure:
It is what as known as “wingnutetics”, a special type of logic similar to dialectics.
First you take your head (thesis) and then your ass (antithesis) and you shove the former up the latter (synthesis).
And ta da, you can manufacture such stunning leaps of logic as featured above.
I never know when a wingnut cites a survey whether it is legit or the byproduct of some AEI style think tank.
Well, yeah, we don’t know for sure but there’s a 99.999% chance it’s the latter.
I wonder if calling someone anti-Semitic “consistently predicts” Likudnikism?
I’m sure Martin will be reporting on a study of this any day now.
I’ve actually had the same experience that you have, with the Israelis I know. They’re generally much more moderate and much more compassionate towards the Palestinians than the vehemently pro-Israel Americans I’ve talked to.
I hope this comment doesn’t summon the Provos and the Loyalists from the Prussian Blue thread but this phenomena does not seem limited to Israelis and American Jews. Back in the 70s and 80s I used to play hurling and Gaelic football at a place called Gaelic Park in the Bronx. A lot of the parents of us players were sraight off the boat Irish but it was the American born attendees who were making speeches and passing the hat for the IRA, via NORAID. I remember my father railing against them (“bloody eedjits, fecking gobshites”) in the car on the way home.
I remember my father railing against them (�bloody eedjits, fecking gobshites�) in the car on the way home.
Your father was Father Jack??!? Sweet.
“And as researchers Edward Kaplan and Charles Small have demonstrated in Europe, anti-Israel sentiment “consistently predictsâ€? the probability that an individual is also anti-Semitic…”
Since when are we like those jerks in Europe, this is America. Hey here’s a deal for Mark Noonan; if we can be anti-semitic like Europe why can’t we have universal health care too. How bout it conservatives? I would gladly start calling myself horrible slurs for some sweet, sweet colon cancer screenings.
Not that I disagree with Marita in any substantial way, but I think there can be ‘good’ anti-semites who love Israel, especially today. They’re the ones who think Israel’s existence means Jebus is coming back soon, n in fact that a crazy, warmongering Israel means all them Jews everywhere r gonna die soon.
I was in love with a Romanian raised in Israel for many years, n though her family left before assassins derailed the peace process she always told me Israel was much like the US. There’s a sane, secular population who want relatively sane policies but are disparate and easily divided, and a smaller, much more centrally organized, religious population with oversized political power who make the crazy keep happening. What little I know about the last 7 years or so suggests that division isn’t as clear as it used to be, and that the secular base has also gone a bit crazy. I’ve been both curious and afraid to email the ex and see where her position is now. She lived in Haifa, so the bombings last summer would’ve had a real impact on her.
As for the IRA parallel, yeah, definitely. My ex is at Mt. Sinai doing an MD/PhD, and before we ended it she’d frequently complain about how the zionists there were the folk who had no idea what the realities on the ground were, and were just trying to show how jewish they were. (Her words, that last bit, not mine.)
When are ya’ll gonna get your RSS feed working again?
Oh my. I found this over at Tboggs place. I don’t know if it’s serious or a joke, but you gotta check it out either way. Yikes!!
mikey
Most right-wingers justify Israel’s actions by claiming that the Palestinians want to exterminate the Israeli Jews. Therefore, whenever they say “we are all Israelis now” they are accusing Muslims of wanting to exterminate all Westerners.
Are the wingnuts worried that even if everything else they say about Islam is accepted by most people, in the absence of supposed Muslim genocidal intentions towards the West there’s still the “better dhimmi than génocidaire” obstacle to overcome?
Personally I’d think genociding over a billion people would be justifiable in order to avoid extermination or outright slavery, but not in order to avoid dhimmitude.
Israel has no right to exist. Britain has no right to exist. Neither does the United States of America. Nor Italy, nor France, nor Indonesia, nor Mali, nor Guatemala, or any other nation which could be named.
No state has a right to exist. Nations are not people. Nations do not have rights.
Nations are not created or destroyed in the same way people are created or destroyed.
If one day the member nations of the European Union were to democratically decide to join together to become actually one big country, it would not mean that people living in Britain (or for that matter England or Scotland or Wales etc) would die, nor that Italians would die, or so forth.
Neither would there be a super-human being known as “Germany” which could stride into the United Nations and insist, against the wishes of its own citizens, that it had a “right” to exist beyond the desires of the citizenry.
Israelis, on the other hand, have as much right to form a nation as do other people on the planet.
This question of whether or not “Israel has a right to exist” is not a question about Israel, but a question about Israelis.
The right wing has averted important discussions for too long by making people think that legal beings such as nations exist in a literal sense, rather than being a legal creation of their own citizens.
mikey,
It’s a joke. A very funny joke. I don’t blame you for being confused. In the country-music milieu, it is hard to tell sincere from satire.
In the country-music milieu, it is hard to tell sincere from satire.
Reckon so. The same can be said for wingnuts and the wingnut women who love them. I mean, sure Marie Jon’ would most likely not approve, but I’ve met lots of trailer park women throughout the south who would think that was a lovely sentiment…
mikey
Look, Israel (the Jewish State) and ‘Israel’ (the plank of US foreign policy) are two very different things with the same name.
El Cid: you know it! Nations are not people, just as corporations aren’t. And frankly, none of them should have the right to exist.
I’m very pro-Semitic, just as I am very anti-Israeli-State. Love me some Jews, can’t stand me some illegitimate stolen-Palestinian-land Israeli-State false-construct.