From ms@gf.org Fri Mar 7 14:09:24 2003 Received: from mxu5.u.washington.edu (mxu5.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.164]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW03.03/8.12.1+UW03.02) with ESMTP id h27M9OCK028212 for ; Fri, 7 Mar 2003 14:09:24 -0800 Received: from firewall.ext (gf.gf.org [207.86.8.110]) by mxu5.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW03.03/8.12.1+UW03.02) with SMTP id h27M9MIc027573 for ; Fri, 7 Mar 2003 14:09:22 -0800 Received: from inside-www.gf.org by firewall.ext via smtpd (for mxu5.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.164]) with SMTP; 7 Mar 2003 22:09:22 UT Received: (qmail 21248 invoked by uid 527); 7 Mar 2003 22:09:15 -0000 From: "Michael J. Smith" Reply-To: ms@gf.org To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Talking to the wall Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 17:09:15 -0500 References: <3E68F6B3.CC355310@noho.com> In-Reply-To: <3E68F6B3.CC355310@noho.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200303071709.15506.ms@gf.org> On Friday 07 March 2003 14:44, Carl Sesar wrote: > Now go to Michael J. Smith's serendipitous posting, Casus Belli, Wed 5 > March 2003, 16:23; in plain language, it sheds unambiguous light on some > of Willett's, and academia's perspective on the conflict. Smith's ethnic > cleansing slur and hint of a Jewish agenda for world domination by > manipulating the US, reek of blood libel and the Protocols of Zion's > conspiracy theory. This is all so silly that one doesn't know where to start. For that matter, it probably isn't even necessary to start, since I imagine that most members of this list -- including Carl Sesar, if he were honest -- are quite capable of distinguishing between "Israel" and "the Jews", in spite of unremitting effort by the Israeli PR apparatus to conflate the two ideas. One really doesn't know whether to be more offended by being called an anti-Semite, or by having one's intelligence insulted. On balance I think the latter. The former canard has been slung about with such unscrupulous abandon, in defense of the indefensible in the Middle East, that's it's become a kind of unmeaning background noise to any serious discussion of contemporary politics. But really, Carl, save it for some audience who might conceivably be taken in. As an astute student of politics used to say, That dog won't hunt here. --Michael J. Smith ms@gf.org .