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A web column of commentary and analysis
from Martin Kramer |
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Wednesday, February 5, 2003. Bir Zeit-on-Hudson. Two weekends ago, Columbia University hosted a Palestinian film festival. I have nothing against such festivals, which have been held over the past year in Seattle and Chicago. Some of the films are worthy examples of the art. But of course, Columbia's faculty can be counted upon to give a legitimate exercise the flavor of a hate-fest. This time, it was the turn of Joseph Massad, an assistant professor in the department that sponsored the festival. According to the Columbia Daily Spectator, Massad, speaking on a festival panel, praised the films as "weapons" and "likened Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cultural views to those of Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels."
All this is standard procedure for Massad, who throws out Nazi analogies with reckless abandon. (When the Campus Watch website named him, presumably for doing just that sort of thing, he called it "a Gestapo file.") This week, Massad has cropped up on the pages of Al-Ahram Weekly, and he has outdone himself. The article is a rant against the anti-Israel left in Europe (e.g., Derrida, Bourdieu), for not being anti-Israel enough. Alas, too many of the left's culture heroes only demand an end to Israeli occupation. They fail to see that Israel itself, in any borders, is a racist entity. The Jews, not being a nation by (Massad's) definition, cannot have nationalism. They have only racism, implemented through colonialism. In this one op-ed, Massad manages to repeat the words "racist" and "racism" twenty-two times. Talk about Goebbels.
So here are the highlights. Israel is "a racist Jewish state," the "offspring" of "the foundational racism of Zionism." The "European Jew is a colonizer who has used racist colonial violence for the last century against the Palestinian people." Israel was founded "by armed colonial settlers." "Zionist Jewish colonialism" was a "commitment to European white supremacy in Jewish guise." "Jewish colonists were part of the British colonial death squads that murdered Palestinian revolutionaries between 1936 and 1939." There has been an "ideological and practical collusion between Zionism and anti-Semitism since the inception of the movement." Zionism "has always been predicated on anti-Semitism and on an alliance between Zionists and anti-Semitic imperialists." Zionism itself had an "anti-Semitic project of destroying Jewish cultures and languages in the diaspora."
Heard enough? Too bad. "Israeli colonialism and racism operate with the same force, albeit with different means, inside the Jewish state as they do in the territories Israel occupies." Israel's racism manifests itself in "the racist curricula of Israeli Jewish schools, the racist Israeli Jewish media representations of Palestinians, the racist declarations of Israeli Jewish leaders on the right and on the left, and the Jewish supremacist rights and privileges guiding Zionism and Israeli state laws and policies." "The ultimate achievement of Israel," concludes Massad, is "the transformation of the Jew into the anti-Semite, and the Palestinian into the Jew."
On any blind reading, you would discount these as the blurtings of a rabid fanatic, obviously consumed by a hatred of Israel and its people so venomous and manic that it has destroyed any capacity for sober historical judgment. You would be right.
Yet Massad, in the dens he inhabits, is not considered a fanatic at all. Quite the contrary: he is the flower of Columbia University and American Middle Eastern studies. He completed his doctorate at Columbia; Columbia University Press published it; and Columbia University now employs him (to teach, inter alia, Israeli politics and society). The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) awarded him its prize for outstanding dissertation, and the resulting book has been reviewed favorably by MESA's current president-elect. Massad also recently passed his three-year review at Columbia, and is now on leave writing what I have heard described as his "tenure book," the opus he hopes will make Columbia his oyster. It's entitled The Persistence of the Palestinian Question, and its core argument is—you guessed it—Israel is a racist state.
It will be fascinating to see how Rashid Khalidi, the new Edward Said Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia, and designated head of its Middle East Institute, deals with the Massad phenomenon. (Khalidi earlier endorsed Massad's first book as "one of the best of the new crop.") And I eagerly look forward to Massad's "tenure book"—or, to borrow from his own stock of analogies, his Mein Kampf.
POSTSCRIPT: I noticed that Khalidi's endorsement of Massad's only book describes it as "well-written." So here's a sample, from chapter one:
Whereas the genetic moment of every national interpellation secures the subsequent claims made by popular nationalism anchoring the political and popular concept of the nation, every retelling of the story of the nation becomes in fact a moment of sublation (incorporation and transcendence), wherein the newly constituted Jordanian identity sublates its predecessor in an interminable process, and whereby the new Jordanian identity is reinscribed as the one that had always already existed as it does today. Also don't miss Massad's recent exchange with Israeli "new historian" Benny Morris, in which Morris turns the tables and shows "surprise" at Massad's racism. "I resent your accusation of racism," Massad huffed—and immediately retaliated by calling Morris a "racist Orientalist." Is there a pattern here?
UPDATE: One of the things I did learn from Orientalism was that the most effective way to damn someone is to quote him. Said, in his walk through the valley of orientalist texts, left no quote unturned. I recently deployed this technique in dealing with Columbia's Joseph Massad, who wrote an anti-Israel article in the Ahram Weekly full of self-incriminating hyperbole. All I had to do was quote him.
Now Massad has replied, also in the Ahram Weekly, in an article loaded with sweeping assertions. According to Massad, I am "keen to defend Israel's prerogative to kill and bomb anyone who stands in its way." I seek to "extend Israeli violence to the U.S. academic arena." I have "not yet eliminated anyone physically," but I and my "young dupes" have the "express aim of imploding freedom." I am guilty of "virulent anti-Arab racism." And so on.
What disappoints me about this rambling text of 2,300 words is that Massad does not quote me even once. Of course, nowhere have I written that Israel has the "prerogative to kill and bomb anyone," but surely I must have written something worth quoting, even out of context, which would damn me. Massad, alas, has failed to master the ingenious technique of Orientalism, despite reading and rereading it. (He's also failed to learn from Said that you lie low until you have tenure, but that's another matter.)
It's just another reminder that the unique and irreplacable Edward Said will have no successors. The Beirut Daily Star once likened one of Said's Beirut lectures to "an American rock concert for the learned and the not-so." An apt comparison—and when Said is gone, we'll be left with the Edward impersonators.
Updates from Sandbox
The updates below originally appeared in Sandbox, this website's quick news weblog. Sandbox is a supplement to the established web column Sandstorm.
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Myopic Massad? Another "D" paper by Columbia's Joseph Massad over at the Ahram Weekly, arguing that Zionism is a species of Orientalist racism, this time as evidenced in the doctrines of its three major thinkers: Theodore Herzl, Meir Kahane, and Benny Morris. The world isn't short of people who are too myopic to see ambiguities in Jewish identity, and complexities in an Israel juxtaposed between East and West. Suffice it to say that if Israel were just a case of white European settler-colonialism, like French Algeria, it would have disappeared long ago. It's apparently something else or something more, but Massad hasn't figured that out. Indeed, he hasn't even tried. He wants tenure at Columbia, and will seek it with a new book entitled The Persistence of the Palestinian Question. Will Columbia scrape bottom?
Fri, Feb 20 2004 3:05 am |
Edward Said wannabe. Asaf Romirowsky, writing in the New York Sun, takes aim at Joseph Massad, the Edward Said Imitator at Columbia. Massad's project (and best shot at tenure) is to pose as the true heir of the departed icon. The following may be the most self-serving opening of an obituary ever written (by Massad on Said): "'Joseph, are you still sleeping, it's 8am already?' These are the first words I would hear upon picking up the phone three, four times a week. Edward's powerful teasing voice on the other side goading me to emulate his work regimen: 'I have been up since 5:30.'" Got that? Said's first act, most working days, was to phone Joseph Massad. Will this stuff get him tenure at Columbia? We'll see.
Wed, May 05 2004 5:49 pm |
The Massad question. Here's a nice synopsis of the stump lecture delivered by Columbia's Joseph Massad, on "The Persistence of the Palestinian Question." Massad poses as an expert on modern Jewish history, the mystery of which he has miraculously penetrated (and without even knowing Hebrew!): Zionists are antisemites, and they have turned the Palestinians into Jews! Conclusion: Israel should be de-Europeanized, and Israeli Jews should be assimilated into the region. (Unlike me, Massad would get to remain Europeanized. He's written self-importantly about how he and Edward Said would "argue about Chopin and John Field.") Here's my idea: Massad should be de-Columbia-nized when he comes up for tenure.
Mon, Jun 14 2004 4:49 am |
Columbia exposed. "Columbia Abuzz Over Underground Film"—that's the headline of this New York Sun story on a short documentary film, in which Jewish students talk of faculty intimidation over Israel. It's been viewed by Columbia's provost and Barnard's president; the latter is reported to have said that the film emotionally affected her. The chief cause of complaint, not surprisingly, is Joseph Massad, who's up for tenure this year. The article notes that Columbia's own internal review of bias had turned up nothing (not surprising, given the university's history of denial), so the David Project, producer of the film, has scored a hit. When I've seen it, I'll say more.
Wed, Oct 20 2004 6:15 pm |
Columbia's Massad problem. The New York Sun reports that Congressman Anthony Weiner, a Democrat of Brooklyn and Queens, has written to Columbia president Lee Bollinger, urging him to "fire" Joseph Massad. This is in response to the David Project's short film on faculty intimidation of students at Columbia, where Massad is spotlighted. I sincerely hope that Columbia will have the good sense not to tenure Massad, who is a pseudo-scholar, but I'm not sure letters from politicians are the way to get there. The opinion of serious scholars matters more. In this regard, have a look at Prof. Asher Susser's review of Massad's book Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (scroll down; it's the fourth review). Susser, who's a renowned authority on Jordan, finds Massad guilty of "ideological bias," "factual distortion and sheer invention."
Fri, Oct 22 2004 12:44 pm |
Massad distorted. Neville Hoad, an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas, is the author of a petition in support of Joseph Massad, whose alleged intimidation of students figures in a documentary exposé on the clique that runs Middle Eastern studies at Columbia. Massad, Hoad writes, "has courageously written in Arabic and in English against anti-Semitism and anti-Semites." Wait a minute. It's Massad's contention that Zionism is anti-Semitism: he's written in Arabic and English against Zionist anti-Semitism. That's a perverse variation on the Zionism=Nazism equation. (Indeed, Massad has compared Ariel Sharon to Goebbels.) No courage here, just crude defamation of a nation. I'll be watching who signs this tendentious and misleading petition, which seeks to silence legitimate criticism of hate speech.
Tue, Oct 26 2004 6:01 pm |
Zion envy. Today's New York Sun reports this tidbit from the David Project film on intimidation of students by Columbia faculty. "A Columbia student, Noah Liben, recalls a class he had with Mr. [Joseph] Massad in spring 2001 during which the professor, while making the argument that Zionism is a male-dominated movement, told students that the Hebrew word zion means 'penis'. Zion actually means a 'designated area or sign post', which sounds similar to zayin, which means a weapon or penis." In fact, the two words don't even sound similar in Hebrew, because they don't have the same root: Zion is pronounced tsiyon. It's hard to know what is more risible here: Massad's ignorance of Hebrew orthography or his perverse mode of analysis. When Bernard Lewis wrote that the Arabic word for revolution, thawra, came from a root also meaning the stirring of a camel, Edward Said claimed Lewis was hinting "that the Arab is scarcely more than a neurotic sexual being." Ridiculous, but Massad really does practice just this kind of sex-philology. What's pathetic is that he's applied it to a language he doesn't know, and to a word he can't even spell.
Thu, Oct 28 2004 11:44 am |
Massad petition. Just above I wrote that the tendentious petition in support of Joseph Massad was drafted by an English prof at the University of Texas, one Neville Hoad. Hoad has been pushing the petition, but it's actually the work of As'ad AbuKhalil, California State University, Stanislaus, who's the first signatory and who announced on his website that he'd be preparing it. It's AbuKhalil who concocted the deceptive claim that Massad has "written courageously in Arabic and English against anti-Semitism and anti-Semites." I've read through the signatories of the petition, and recognize very few names. Alas for Massad, the doyens of Middle Eastern studies aren't rallying around him, even at Columbia.
Thu, Oct 28 2004 10:47 pm |
Apoplectic Massad. Here's a student review of Joseph Massad's section in "Contemporary Civilization," part of Columbia's core curriculum. "A bizarre experience.... The quality of the class varies greatly with Massad's level of interest in a particular subject, and he isn't interested in very much until he gets to Marx and Nietzsche. Our lecture on Thomas Aquinas, for instance, lasted about 20 minutes. You'll spend most classes wondering how an apoplectic rant about U.S. foreign policy that relates only vaguely to Plato or Aristotle is supposed to represent the 'core' of your Columbia education.... Massad, in my opinion, is an egomaniac and entirely uninterested in hearing anything other than the sound of his own voice. I found his predilection for using his academic training to pick apart the semantics of statements made by his students horrifying."
Thu, Nov 4 2004 7:32 pm
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Real anti-Semites. Joseph Massad writes to defend his core idea (Zionism is anti-Semitic), attack his student accusers, and cast himself as the victim of a witch-hunt. Massad apparently never heard the adage that if you're in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. Instead, he floats the new claim that Christian fundamentalists are "a quarter of the American electorate and are the most powerful anti-Semitic group worldwide." (Maybe American Jews should flee to a place where anti-Semites are weaker, like France or Saudi Arabia or Malaysia.) Columbia dean Lisa Anderson has noted that "over the course of time, good ideas drive out bad. American universities don’t teach pre-Copernican astronomy, phrenology, fascism, astrology, eugenics, and a host of other wrong-headed notions." So is Columbia prepared to tenure a professor who teaches that Christian (and Jewish) supporters of Israel in America are the world's most powerful anti-Semites? That's the crux of the Massad question.
Sat, Nov 6 2004 10:59 am |
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Sandstorm is the web column of Martin Kramer's website, www.MartinKramer.org. You have reached a past column. To view the current column and archive, click here. |
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earlier Massad
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Prior to publication of this Sandstorm column, Martin Kramer reported on student complaints about Joseph Massad's teaching, in a column in the Middle East Quarterly (summer 2002). Click here and scroll down to "More malpractice."
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