Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Penn's Ian Lustick - Academic Streetwalker for Norman Finkelstein
Collaborators in the War against the Jews: Ian Lustick – by Steven Plaut
Posted By Steven Plaut On January 5, 2010 @ 12:25 am In FrontPage | 11 Comments
"There is no winning this war, because the war on terror is the enemy."
— Ian Lustick [1]
Three years ago, the tenured left at DePaul was attempting to force the university into granting tenure to the anti-Semitic embarrassment Norman Finkelstein [2], who has no bona fide academic publications, and is well known as a collaborator [3] with the Hezb'Allah terrorists. To manipulate the tenure system, these leftists needed to recruit letters of recommendation from people at other schools who could be counted upon to endorse and support Finkelstein out of a sense of political solidarity with his propaganda. Two academics were willing to play ball. One was Avi Shlaim, a former Oxford professor known as a hater of Israel despite his own Israeli heritage. The other was Ian Lustick, a radical Jewish anti-Israel and anti-American professor at the University of Pennsylvania who also stood and delivered for Finkelstein, although his opinion was not enough to convince the DePaul to give him tenure.
Lustick used to be Associate Director of the Solomon Asch Center for Ethnic Studies at Penn, named after a famous Gestalt psychologist who must be rolling in his grave at the fact that the Center named for him has hosted radicals and published work that includes a vilification of Israel for building its security wall to keep out suicide bombers.
Lustick has made an academic career out of bashing Israel [4] and fighting against the [5] war on terror. He speaks frequently before [6] anti-Israel and pro-terror conferences and organizations. He has also written for [7] Michael Lerner's goofy pseudo-Jewish anti-Israel magazine, Tikkun.
Israelis who insist upon rejecting the demands made upon them by Islamofascist terrorists are denounced by Lustick as [8]"dangerous fundamentalists." Lustick has long campaigned for a Palestinian state and for the division [5] of Jerusalem. He has compared the Palestinian [9] "suffering" to that of the Jews in the Holocaust, and he has called on Israel to teach about this Palestinian experience in its schools just like German children study the Holocaust. Meanwhile, he denounced the President of Harvard [10], Lawrence Summers, for claiming that the "Divest from Israel" movement is anti-Semitic. Like his client Norman Finkelstein, Lustick likes to rant [11] about the nefarious powers of the "Israel Lobby."
In one of those Orwellian ironies, Lustick actually once headed the Association for Israel Studies [12] in the United States. He has never spent much time in Israel, although he claims that nation's history and politics as a specialty. He is a defender of Israel's own anti-Israel "New Historians," who use historic revisionism to promote the agenda of Israel's enemies. Lustick has spoken favorably of the so-called "One-State Solution [13]" in which Israel will cease to exist altogether. (Cynics refer to it as the Rwanda Solution.) Lustick took part in the [14] anti-Israel York University conference [15] last year devoted to discovering an alternative to Israel's continuing existence.
Lustick is almost as anti-American as he is anti-Israel. He may be best known for his expressions of regret that America did not lose more soldiers in the campaign to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan. Denying that terrorism is a valid concept, he deconstructs the term by claiming that activities can be classified as "terrorist" if they encompass any violent "actions and threats" by governmental militaries and even tax collectors, as well as insurgents."
Lustick describes America's relationship [16] to Israel as "like [that of] a friend to a drug addict." He denounces the United States [17] as a "neo-imperialist" power. He likes to rant against [18] "hegemonists," by which he means mainly the US, the West, and Israel. He frequently speaks about [12] nefarious cabals – his word – notably those "of neocon warriors driving this juggernaut" He insists that [19] President Bush and not al-Qaeda was the true cause of world terrorism. He has campaigned staunchly against America's war against terrorism and expressed his hostility in his book Trapped in the War on Terror [20].
Denouncing America's military efforts in "The Nation," Lustick wrote:
'This is a supply-side war. There is very little demand for the war, and nothing in the way of a compelling necessity for it. But the enormous supply of political capital flowing toward the President after 9/11 combines with the overweening preponderance of US military power on a global level to make the production of war in Iraq not a trivial affair but one that can be embraced with relatively little thought and almost no need to appeal to a readiness to sacrifice."
Meanwhile, Lustick engages in equally tortured apologetics for Hamas, which he claims "is mainly popular because one of the things it is trusted to do is probably be ready to live with Israel, even if not officially, for a very long time."
Why is there no peace in the Middle East? Here is the [21] Lustick answer, according to a Campus Watch report of a University of Pennsylvania event: "Lustick expressed grave doubts about a resolution to the conflict, and said that insisting on a 'Jewish state' and not a 'predominantly Jewish polity' in the Middle East is one barrier to any solution." A Jewish state is the obstacle; a Palestinian state is the solution.
When it came to Afghanistan, Lustick yearned for a longer war and was concerned only to discredit the so-called "cabal." Said Lustick: "What I wanted was a war, a Goldilocks war, not too fast and not too slow, but we didn't get it. We got one that was too fast and it gave the whip end to the cabal." This cabal, Lustick contended, comprised "neo-conservative warriors" who aspired to nothing less than "American-military-enforced new order in the Middle East with pretensions and fantasies of democratization of the region of an American rule, domination of the oil wealth there, establishment of large, semi-permanent military bases in the heart of the region and the elimination of all pressures on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza."
A few years back Lustick was in the news for what has become known as the Gil-White Affair. Francisco Gil-White was fired by Penn at [22] the initiative of Lustick and claims that this was because of the fact that Lustick disapproved of the pro-Israel opinions and activism of Gil-White, who alleges that Lustick's motivation for this opposition was Gil-White's research into the historical origins of Arab terrorism.
Such research is, for Lustick, illegitimate. Norman Finkelstein's pro-terror political opinions are another matter altogether.
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/01/05/collaborators-in-the-war-against-the-jews-ian-lustick-by-steven-plaut/
URLs in this post:
[1] Ian Lustick: http://www.campus-watch.org/quotes.php
[2] Norman Finkelstein: http://97.74.65.51/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25959
[3] well known as a collaborator: http://frontpagemag.com../2009/09/24/collaborators-in-the-war-against-the-jews-norman-finkelstein-by-john-perazzo/feed
[4] career out of bashing Israel: http://www.hirhome.com/lustick_plo.htm
[5] fighting against the: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Lustick/lustick-con5.html
[6] speaks frequently before: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/3794
[7] has also written for: http://www.polisci.upenn.edu/faculty/faculty-articles&papers/Lustick_Blood_and_Fire.doc
[8] Lustick as : http://members.tripod.com/alabasters_archive/dangerous_fundamentalists.html
[9] has compared the Palestinian: http://prrn.mcgill.ca/prrn/papers/lustick.html
[10] denounced the President of Harvard: http://www.facinghistory.org/node/241
[11] likes to rant: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7085
[12] Association for Israel Studies: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/442
[13] One-State Solution: http://www.passia.org/publications/Impasse/Pal-Isr-Impasse.htm
[14] Lustick took part in the: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7553
[15] York University conference: http://www.yorku.ca/ipconf/index.html
[16] describes America's relationship: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6982
[17] denounces the United States: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Lustick/lustick06-con4.html
[18] likes to rant against: http://www.polisci.upenn.edu/faculty/bios/Pubs/Hegemonic_Beliefs-Territorial_Rights.pdf
[19] He insists that: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2754
[20] Trapped in the War on Terror: http://www.trappedinthewaronterror.com/
[21] Here is the: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7234
[22] was fired by Penn at: http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=14252
[23] Sarah Roy: http://frontpagemag.com../2009/11/18/collaborators-in-the-war-against-the-jews-sara-roy/
[24] Howard Zinn: http://frontpagemag.com../2009/12/04/2009/10/21/collaborators-in-the-campus-war-against-israel-and-the-jews-howard-zinn/
[25] Joel Beinin: http://frontpagemag.com../2009/12/04/2009/11/18/2009/10/16/collaborators-in-the-campus-war-against-israel-and-the-jews-joel-beinin-%E2%80%93-by-steven-plaut/
[26] Mark LeVine: http://frontpagemag.com../2009/12/04/2009/11/18/2009/10/14/collaborators-in-the-campus-war-against-israel-and-the-jews-mark-levine-%E2%80%93-by-steven-plaut/
[27] Neve Gordon: http://frontpagemag.com../2009/12/04/2009/11/18/2009/10/13/collaborators-in-the-campus-war-against-israel-and-the-jews-neve-gordon-by-john-perazzo/
[28] Norman Finkelstein: http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36406
[29] Tony Judt: http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36238
[30] Michael Lerner: http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36178
[31] Marc H. Ellis: http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36028
2. "The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians.... Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told." Winston Churchill, Royal Society of St. George, 24 April 1933
3. C'est funny, no?
French arsonists fail to break their New Year's car-torching record
07:01 AM
French riot police officers patrol by a burning car in Bagnolet, a Paris suburb, last August after rioting youth swept through. The car arsonists were at work again on New Year's Eve, torching more than 1,000 cars.
CAPTION
By Jacques Brinon/AP
Youths burned 1,137 cars across France on New Year's Eve, just short of the record they set last year, Reuters is reporting.
The French Interior Ministry said the number of vehicles torched was only 10 short of the record 1,147 vehicles burned during the same period in 2008. Is that progress? Well, not really:
The small reduction in vandalism came despite a big increase in police presence. The Interior Ministry put 45,000 police on the street during the night -- 10,000 more than 12 months ago.
Car burnings have become common in poor suburbs that ring France's big cities, such as protests last summer shown in the photo above. But the arson is especially prevalent on New Year's Eve. Police kept 549 people under detention overnight, almost twice as many as last year.
4. The Joke's on Us -- By: Mark Steyn
via Articles on National Review Online by webmaster@nationalreview.com (Mark Steyn) on 1/2/10
On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh?
But the Pantybomber wasn't the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions.
Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they were permitting only one item of carry-on on U.S. flights. In Toronto, no large purses.
Um, the Pantybomber didn't have a purse. He brought the bomb on board under his private parts, and his private parts weren't part of his carry-on (although, if reports of injuries sustained in his failed mission are correct, they may well have been part of his carry-off). But no matter. If in doubt, blame the victim. The TSA announced that for the last hour of the flight no passenger can use the toilets or have anything on his lap -- not a laptop, not a blanket, not a stewardess, not even a paperback book. I can't wait for the first lawsuit after an infidel flight attendant confiscates a litigious imam's Koran as they're coming into LAX.
You're still free to read a paperback if you're flying from Paris to Sydney, or Stockholm to Beijing, or Kuala Lumpur to Heathrow. But not to LAX or JFK. The TSA were responding as bonehead bureaucracies do: Don't just stand there, do something. And every time the TSA does something, you'll have to stand there, longer and longer, suffering ever more pointless indignities. Last week, guest-hosting The Rush Limbaugh Show, I took a call from a lady who said that, if it helps keep her safe, she's happy to get to the airport "four, five, whatever hours" before the flight. Try to put a figure on "whatever" and you'll get a sense of where America's transportation system is headed. Ten years ago, you got to the airport 45 minutes, an hour before the flight. Now, thanks to the ever more demanding choreographers of the homeland-security kabuki, it's two, three, four, whatever. Look at O'Hare and imagine the size of airport we'll need. And by then the Pantybomber won't even need to get on the plane; he can kill more people blowing up the check-in line.
And remember, this was a bombing mission that "failed." With failures like this, who needs victories?
Joke, joke, joke. The only good news was that the derision was so universal that the TSA promptly reined in some of their wackier impositions a couple of days later. But by then Janet Incompetano, the homeland-security secretary, had gone on TV and declared to the world that there was nothing to worry about: "The system worked."
Indeed, it worked "smoothly." The al-Qaeda trainee on a terrorist watch list, a man banned from the United Kingdom and reported to the CIA by his own father, got on board the plane, assembled the bomb, and attempted to detonate it. But don't worry 'bout a thing; the system worked.
Twenty-four hours later, Secretary Incompetano was back on TV to protest that her words had been taken "out of context." No doubt, the al-Qaeda-trained CIA-reported cash-paying crotch-stuffed watch-list member's smooth progress through check-in was also taken "out of context."
But by then the president of the United States had also taken to the airwaves. For three days, he had remained silent -- which I believe is a world record for the 44th president. Since Jan. 20, 2009, it's been difficult to switch on the TV and not find him yakking -- accepting an award in Oslo for not being George W. Bush, doing Special Olympics gags with Jay Leno, apologizing for America to some dictator or other#...# But across the electric wires an eerie still had descended. And when the president finally spoke, even making allowances for his usual detached cool, he sounded less like a commander-in-chief addressing the nation after an attempted attack than an assistant DA at a Cook County press conference announcing a drug bust: "Here's what we know so far.#...#As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device.#...#The suspect was immediately subdued.#...#The suspect is now in custody and has been charged." Etc, etc, piling up one desiccated legalism on another: "Allegedly#...#" "suspect#...#" "charged#...#" The president can't tell an allegedly alleged suspect (which is what he is in Obama fantasy-land) from an enemy combatant (which is what he is in cold hard reality). But worse than the complacent cop-show jargonizing was a phrase it's hard to read as anything other than a deliberate attempt to mislead the public: The president referred to the Knickerbomber as an "isolated extremist." By this time, it was already clear that young Umar had been radicalized by jihadist networks in London and fast-tracked to training in Yemen by terror operatives who understood the potentially high value of a Westernized Muslim with excellent English from a respectable family. Yet President Obama tried to pass him off as some sort of lone misfit who wakes up one morning and goes bananas. Could happen to anyone.
But, if it takes the White House three days to react to an attack on the United States, their rapid-response unit can fire back in nothing flat when Dick Cheney speaks. "It is telling," huffed the president's communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, "that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the administration than condemning the attackers."
"Condemning the attackers"? What happened to all the allegedly alleged stuff? Shouldn't that be "condemning the alleged isolated attacker"? The communications director seems to be wandering a bit off-message here, whatever the message is: The system worked, so we're inconveniencing you even more. The system failed, but the alleged suspect is an isolated extremist, so why won't that cowardly squish Cheney have the guts to condemn the attacker and his vast network of associates?
The real message was conveyed by Fouad Ajami, discussing the new administration's foreign policy in the Wall Street Journal: "No despot fears Mr. Obama, and no blogger in Cairo or Damascus or Tehran, no demonstrator in those cruel Iranian streets, expects Mr. Obama to ride to the rescue." True. Another Iranian deadline passed on New Year's Eve, but the United States will set a new one for Groundhog Day or whenever.
And, just as the thug states understand they now have the run of the planet, so do the terror cells. A thwarted terror attack at Christmas is bad enough. Spending the following week making yourself a global joke is worse. Every A-list despot and dimestore jihadist got that message loud and clear -- and so did American allies already feeling semi-abandoned by this most parochial of presidents. Expect a bumpy twelve months ahead. Happy New Year.
5. Neturei Karta spends shabbas with the Hamas: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1139332.html
| ||||
| Anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews celebrate Sabbath in Gaza | ||||
| By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service |
6. One of the Arab fascist Knesset Members was being interviewed this past week on the 5PM news show by Dan Margolit, often said to be Israel's Walter Cronkite. The Arab politicians began foaming at the mouth, cursing, screaming insults. Margolit handled it ok. It is in Hebrew but you can see the show here: Erev Hadash:
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=2nrX2NcWYio&feature=player_ embedded
Meanwhile, groups of Israeli far leftists are collecting signatures against Margolit for not bowing down and kissing the ass of the cursing fascist. They are using this facebook address to do so: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=227111158659&ref=nf
Want to send them a cybermoon?
7. Thought from Peter Simpson: Is it a strange coincidence that the Xmas day bomber attended the same Engineering Faculty at University College London in Gower Street London WC1 as the bomber of the Israeli Embassy in 1994, Samar Alami. Perhaps they have a department devoted to this subject – it is strange how the latter's connection has not been mentioned in the press and media! See http://www.freesaj.org.uk/
8. My Classmate, the Plane Bomber
by Venetia Thompson
December 30, 2009 | 10:51pm
When former University College London mechanical engineering student Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a plane on Christmas Day, he
became the fourth president of a student Islamic society to face terrorist
charges in three years. Waheed Zaman, former president of the Islam Society
at London Metropolitan University, is facing a retrial on charges that he
was involved in the 2006 liquid-bomb plot to blow up trans-Atlantic
airliners, and two others have been convicted of terrorist offenses since
2007. The government-funded Islam and Citizenship Education Project, which
aims to encourage British citizenship to be taught in madrassahs, and even
supplies teaching materials, clearly has a lot of work to do, as do British
universities.
"Everyone knows London universities are full of would-be nutters honing
their engineering skills whilst simultaneously becoming increasingly
religious. It's one hell of a dangerous combo when you think about it."
When I was in my final year at UCL, the "Christmas undie bomber" would have
been in his first year, a "fresher." We may even have crossed paths in the
library or Students' Union. Like all freshers, he would have attended the
annual Freshers' Fair and signed up to various clubs and societies, probably
ignoring the Ultimate Frisbee Society and the Wilderness Medicine Society
and making a bee-line for the Islamic Society, which he would then go on to
lead. Whilst I was getting drunk and becoming increasingly convinced I was
going to fail my finals, somewhere nearby he was beginning to be
radicalized.
I had various encounters with the UCL Islamic Society, from the relatively
innocent (constantly trying to get me to sign their anti-Israel or anti-Iraq
war petitions, to wear one of their "Free Palestine" T-shirts, or to take
one of their seemingly endless supply of leaflets promoting protests,
sit-ins, and lectures by extremists) to the slightly more sinister (the
friends I made in first year whom I gradually saw less and less of, and who
even began dressing more conservatively as they became more involved with
the society, or the girl I knew who told me she was warned against adopting
"their"�as in our "Western"�culture by an older student she �d met during
Freshers' Week).
One former UCL student even says he was told whilst enjoying a pint in the
union that it was his "duty" as a Muslim to attend society meetings and that
he was frequently invited to Islamic study groups. He jokes that he was
"probably seen as a sitting duck�I was even sttudying 'bomb-making,' as we
affectionately referred to the Department of Chemical Engineering."
He goes on to say: "Everyone knows London universities are full of would-be
nutters honing their engineering skills whilst simultaneously becoming
increasingly religious. It's one hell of a dangerous combo when you think
about it. We all used to joke about it back then, but it's not quite so
funny anymore."
Sadly, the average 18-year-old arriving in London, having spent the last
eight years locked up in a boarding school in the middle of nowhere, or
worse, getting beaten up at the local state-run comprehensive, is going to
be looking for more than the Ultimate Frisbee Society when they finally
arrive at university. They want guidance, identity, friends, and
protection�to feel thatt they belong. Therefore they are perfect fodder for
religious fanatics lurking behind the scenes.
Of course most societies that scoop up lost "freshers" don't encourage known
extremists to come and give lectures to their impressionable members.
Incidentally, no former presidents of other societies have graduated and
gone on to try and blow themselves up or plot terrorist atrocities. It could
be argued that this seems to be a problem specific to university Islamic
societies and the people who are allowed access, or invited to speak at,
study groups, and events that appear to be totally unregulated.
Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion, an independent U.K. think
tank specializing in the study of radicalization and extremism in the U.K.,
tells The Daily Telegraph, "UCL has not just failed to prevent students
being radicalized, they have been complicit." Referring to Abu Usama, an
extremist due to speak at UCL last month and known for preaching that
homosexuals and apostates should be killed, Murray says: "If any other
society at UCL invited someone to speak who encouraged killing homosexuals,
that society would be banned immediately, but academics are afraid of taking
action when it involves Islamic societies in case they are accused of
Islamophobia."
It is perhaps, therefore, unsurprising that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab,
during his time as president of the UCL Islamic Society, was able to launch
what can only be described as an anti-Western propagandist YouTube video
advertising the society's "War on Terror Week" without any intervention from
the university.
It isn't just UCL in the hot seat. A student at the prestigious London
School of Economics�incidentally, where Omar Sheikh, who helped in the
>beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl back in 2002,
studied—recalls the friends made in first year who during the course of
their degrees "took a mysterious turn to the conservative, stopped coming
out and drinking." Then there are the "Death to Israel" T-shirts a Jewish
LSE student tells me he has seen around the LSE campus, where, he says,
"anti-Semitism is rife. There have been plenty of clashes between the
Islamic Soc and the Israel Soc here. It's only going to get worse."
Kings College London, another top university, was where Asif Hanif and Omar
Khan Sharif studied. They carried out a suicide bomb attack on a bar in Tel
Aviv in 2003. Then there is City University, where Abdullah Ahmed Ali, the
ringleader of the 2006 liquid-bomb plot, graduated from. It seems to be a
struggle to find a London university without terrorist alumni.
A YouGov poll conducted in 2008, the only documented extensive study of
British Muslim students to be published, found that 32 percent of the 632
students who took part believed killing in the name of religion to be
justifiable in order to "preserve and promote that religion" or if that
religion is "under attack."
UCL has issued a typically frothy statement claiming that "during his time
on the course Mr. Abdulmutallab never gave his tutors any cause for concern,
and was a well-mannered, quietly spoken, polite and able young man." The UCL
president and provost, Professor Malcolm Grant is "deeply saddened by these
events." It is surely about time that he, and other university heads, stop
their clichéd "but he was such a nice young man" denial and fulfill their
duty of care by monitoring their students, university societies, and who is
being invited to speak on their campuses more closely. They cannot rely on
there always being a heroic Dutchman around to bring down the next
"bomb-making" graduate who decides to blow himself up.
Venetia Thompson is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to The
Spectator. Her memoir Gross Misconduct will be published in February by
Simon and Schuster U.K. She lives in London.
URL:
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-30/my-classmate-the-
undie-bomber/p/>
