One of my themes is that Zionism is dumbing down the Jews. In order to believe the Zionist narrative about Israel, you basically have to block out a lot of history and wipe out another people’s humanity and experience, simply disavow it. Here’s further evidence. Deborah Nussbaum Cohen in the Forward has a fine report on a controversy over a question on an Advanced Placement test. "Some Jewish" high school students ("Some Jewish" is my ace in the hole, too) have objected to an essay question that uses a quote from the late Palestinian-American author Edward Said.
Note that this has nothing to do with Edward Said throwing a rock in Lebanon or whether you think Israel has a right to exist etc.
The Said quote on the AP test reads: “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and its native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.”
“I’m in a public school and most students here have the impression that Israel is the one attacking [the Palestinians],” the 17-year-old [Ayelet] Pearl said. “To put a quote in like this subconsciously reinforces the idea that Israel’s the antagonist, the aggressor, the one in the wrong.”
Though she had just 40 minutes to write the required essay, Pearl froze when she encountered the Said text. “I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t comfortable answering it,” she said. She decided to put a paragraph objecting to the quote’s inclusion at the top of her essay. “I find it really inappropriate to put a political question like that on a test,” she said she wrote.
Using this quote in the AP exam “is very reflective of the widespread use of education and testing as a platform for anti-Israel propaganda,” she told the Forward.
This is crazy. It is an effort to deny the experience of a prominent intellectual who witnessed the Nakba then sought to document it.
For the record. Edward Said grew up in privileged Jerusalem, the Talbiyah neighborhood, and left at 12 in 1947 for Cairo. As the Nakba enfolded his old neighborhood and country, he saw his aunt spending her days helping Palestinian refugees who were pouring desperately into Cairo. He learned that the neighborhood of his youth was now populated by European immigrants, cleansed of Arab life. He was instructed by his father never to bring politics into his work or his career would be finished. Said bit his tongue until 1967, but dissociation about lost Palestine afflicted him all his life. As he wrote in the memoir, Out of Place: "Even now the unreconciled duality I feel about the place, its intricate wrenching, tearing, sorrowful loss as exemplifed in so many distorted lives, including mine, and its status as an admirable country for them (but of course not for us), always gives me pain and a discouraging sense of being solitary, undefended, open to the assaults of trivial things that seem important and threatening, against which I have no weapons."
Huh. Seems like he really means that.
Ayelet Pearl does not want to believe that Israel was an antagonist, an aggressor. This is fantasy. Ennobling Israel at every turn means never having to come to terms with the unfairness of Said’s dispossession– which by the way, was in complete defiance of the 1947 Partition resolution that breathed legitimacy into the Jewish state. It means self-imposed stupidity.
Beautiful and moving, Phil. Thanks.
Meanwhile, Israeli government apologists talk much about suffering “exile,” too.
Yes, it is crazy, but it’s not a form of craziness reserved to Jews (sorry, Witty; Jews are even supremecist supremecists).
Hot topic in today’s news is the initiative in Arizona to remove or revise some ethnic studies topics (read: ‘learning about Mexicans’) from Arizona schools curriculum because some of the content “puts another in a negative light” (ie. unpleasant realities about whites may leak into the subconscious of learners who might be white).
I sure hate to tarnish my creds as a raving antisemite, but it looks like Semis do not have a lock on ethnocentricism.
‘course, Witty my feel compelled to correct me and inform me that Jews got Nobel prizes in ethnocentricism WAY before Nobel was born.
I think you are indulging in the fantasy that every tragedy has a demon, and a demon that cannot be forgiven.
I agree that the change necessary to forgive has not occurred.
One of the tragedies of the story, that I expect you would object to, is that the experience of exile is also the Jewish experience, the motivator for Zionism, and in the terms that Said described (current and historical, intimate and mythic).
My neighborhood that I grew up in in New Rochelle is not the same as it was when I was there. Not subjectively, and not objectively.
The places that remain unchanged while great great historical changes are occurring in the world, are usually not the ones that are progressive, democratic, open (except for a very few). They are most often the places that are reactionary, suppressive, power structured, aristocratic. To insist that it does not change, is to suppress, at least partially.
What was over an extended period is not a model. What was recently is not a model. What is is not a model.
Something new maybe, something that preserves some identity of the past, but without imposing it exclusively. Present forward, designed, discussed on the basis of principles not on results.
Ayelet’s views are the most common in Israel. I’m assuming she is Israeli based on her name. Nevertheless, having gone through the Israeli public school system myself, I’m in total agreement with Phil; it’s a dumbing down process. The Israeli school system treats Palestinians as non-existent. It’s propaganda by omission. The brainwashing process Israeli students undergo is tenfold the process that which the American public undergoes at the hands of US media, such as Fox and CNN.
From which land/country/state have you been forcibly exiled?
Not only is it absurd that you’re comparing natural changes over time with those that are imposed, but you’re actually comparing an ethnic cleansing, several massacres, with a few superficial changes your neighborhood underwent over the years.
Something is mentally wrong with you.
I know what it is. Israelism is a religion, the worship, the adoration and the love of Israel/god. Witty is a believer.
>> One of the tragedies of the story … is that the experience of exile is also the Jewish experience, the motivator for Zionism, and in the terms that Said described …
The Said quote is so eloquent and so *INCLUSIVE* it is incomprehensible that you and that little girl – among others – managed to find it offensive.
But, then, it’s always about the Jews, eh? “Remember the Holocaust!” No one can suffer without the Jews having suffered more. I guess presenting oneself as a human being and not a victim was last week’s mantra (or applies only to non-Jews/Israelis).
Bravo for taking that little girl’s pathetic “trauma” at a benign quote and making it even more pathetic.
If the quote does not have universal significance, then it is in truth an imposition of a Palestinian narrative where it doesn’t belong.
If the quote refers to the experience of exile, then it applies to Jews loud and clear, of a strong attachment to the land (even if in exile for a very long time).
Its an open question as to what degree the change in Jerusalem is natural or unnatural. Near my home town, I was around during a period of urban renewal in White Plains, in the local population that was living in genuinely substandard homes, were evicted and a combination of public buildings and private development replaced the neighborhood.
The people were forcibly removed, and some really fought it. They were forced to neighboring towns, Ossining, Portchester, other parts of White Plains, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, Yonkers.
Other neighborhoods gentrified or were rezoned commercial.
White Plains looks very different than it did when I was 10.
Beirut likely looks different, and is comprised of different ethnic groups in many neighborhoods.
Its too simplistic to say it is solely a result of forced removal. In a state in which there would be no ethnic restrictions to purchase property and free immigration, the neighborhoods might have changed as well.
My guttural feeling of home at living there for 18+ years, is real. It was my home. Its not now. Legally. My parents sold their home to another. But, my home neighborhood feels foreign, as Ed Said described.
“My guttural feeling of home at living there for 18+ years, is real. It was my home. Its not now. Legally. My parents sold their home to another. But, my home neighborhood feels foreign, as Ed Said described. ”
Oh ffs, MAN UP, Witty. Everyone is sick and tired of your pretentious posturing. Your parents sold their home to another? Those people were driven off their homes under the pretense of creating a haven for others. Your home neighbourhood feels foreign? Cry me a damn river.
Ed Said described his sense of alienation from seeing his former home, no longer his home. New people had moved in, new communities.
Some by force, some by purchase, some by natural generational change.
I would hope that he would have acknowledged that a portion of his mourning at that change, was due to his growing older.
There is a cultural disconnect between a more long-term exiled community, the Jewish community, and the recently exiled or partially exiled.
One of the norms of the Jewish community was “we moved every couple generations, we had to, we moved on with our lives”, but then also noting their/our psychological void of exile.
So, many of the Jews that had moved dozens of times to protect themselves from nazis, communists, others, wonder why the Palestinians don’t regard their community as their home, rather than primarily their place.
One is not superior to the other. The social adjustment to regard community as home, is complex, sophisticated, admirable.
I get the hypocrisy of those that were formerly semi-nomadic, becoming landed and fighting with others that are landed.
It is also a conflict between urbanity and rural life. I know farmers near me that had inherited their land from parents, from grandparents, from great-grandparents, maybe one more generation (most immigrated to the region in the early 20th century). They live in proximity to college towns, with sprawl, an entirely new population every 4 years, homeless in ways.
Phil is mobile. I knew that he grew up in Baltimore, lived much of his life in New York, at least some time in Philadelphia, and now outside of New York. Is he a homeless person? Is the land that he lives on now, borrowed or his? He doesn’t have children so he doesn’t see the bonding with place that children do. It could only be from memory for him, say going back to his childhood home and seeing and feeling.
>> If the quote does not have universal significance, then it is in truth an imposition of a Palestinian narrative where it doesn’t belong.
>> If the quote refers to the experience of exile, then it applies to Jews loud and clear, of a strong attachment to the land (even if in exile for a very long time).
That’s all well and good, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of the test, which was to “read excerpts of poetry and prose and compare them to other works they have studied in class.” (Notice that the purpose is not to read excerpts of poetry, determine whether or not the theme is universal and, if so, discuss the Holocaust.)
The Said quote was completely neutral in text and tone. All the girl had to do was compare it to other works studied in class. She – and you – have made a Jewish-suffering mountain out of a completely innocuous text.
And comparing exile to your neighbourhood is quite possibly the second-stupidest thing you’ve said. (The stupidest thing, without a doubt, is the bit about “green yarn”. That one still blows my mind.)
I give up. Witty, you have your head so far up your butt, you’re practically crawling out of your own mouth. Dry your tears on a hundred dollar bill, would you?
Actually, your description of my comments is innaccurate.
I suggested, unlike Phil, that the quote had universal significance. Phil’s comments were entirely that they were of Palestinian experience, and not universal.
The experience of my neighborhood is to sympathize with Said’s feeling, that of feeling alienated from what had been intimate.
As the basis of our experience was different, even though the feeling could be similar, to describe the differences in assumptions is relevant, not irrelevant.
Not every quote is confirmation of “Zionists are evil, Palestinians are innocent”.
Frances,
You don’t have a clue. You are making things up about me, that perhaps you derive from what others say about me, but they are an odd group, and I wouldn’t trust their bias, on politics, on identity, on philosophy, on emotion.
Can it, Witty. Nobody buys your Israel-apologist rubbish.
>> Actually, your description of my comments is innaccurate.
>> I suggested, unlike Phil, that the quote had universal significance. Phil’s comments were entirely that they were of Palestinian experience, and not universal.
To differ with Phil – and to speak to the girl’s reaction regarding an innocuous quote – all you had to do was say “Phil, that quote clearly has a universal, inclusive theme, and it is disappointing that the girl unnecessarily politicized it and inferred from it only Israeli aggression and Palestinian suffering.”
But you didn’t. You turned the story itself into an excuse to play the well-worn “Jews know suffering like no other” record.
I don’t recall ever invoking the “Jews know suffering like no other” theme at all.
I think you are looking for someone to demonize, on a theme that is a rut, a repetition.
I described the quote as potentially appealing to the universal experience of exile. If it didn’t appeal to that universal sentiment, then it did not belong in an official exam.
>> I don’t recall ever invoking the “Jews know suffering like no other” theme at all.
You stated “There is a cultural disconnect between a more long-term exiled community, the Jewish community, and the recently exiled or partially exiled.” The recently-exiled or partially-exiled do not know what it means to be a “long-term exiled” Jew. Only the Jews know that kind of suffering.
>> I think you are looking for someone to demonize, on a theme that is a rut, a repetition.
I’m not looking to demonize anyone. I’m simply astounded that that little girl could take an innocuous, inclusive quote about exile and turn it into a political statement, and that you could then take that statement, ignore the context of the actual test it pertains to, and turn it into a full-blown lament about the suffering of the Jews.
If the quote does not have universal significance, then it is in truth an imposition of a Palestinian narrative
Even if the quote was referring to the Palestinian narrative, what makes you think that it did so exclusively, and at the expense of “universal significance”?
where it doesn’t belong.
So people do not need to be educated on the Palestinian narrative. Right, so not only are you a nakba denier but also a proponent of Nakba denial in education.
>> So people do not need to be educated on the Palestinian narrative.
Whether or not they do, the kicker is that the quote itself was not political, the quote in context of the test was not political and the purpose of the test – to takes quotes such as that one and “compare them to other works … studied in class” – was not political. The girl turned the quote and the test into a political statement.
Her politicization of the test and the quote should be condemned. The story should not be spun into an analysis of the superior suffering of the “long-term exile” Jews. That has absolutely nothing to do with the quote, the context or the test.
But it makes for a great lament. (“Remember the Holocaust!”)
“You stated “There is a cultural disconnect between a more long-term exiled community, the Jewish community, and the recently exiled or partially exiled.” The recently-exiled or partially-exiled do not know what it means to be a “long-term exiled” Jew. Only the Jews know that kind of suffering.”
Those are your words, not mine. My point that I elaborated on was that Jews were in exile so long and desired to remain coherent that they adopted the view, “my family is my home, my community is my home”, not “my physical place is my home”.
And, I stated that neither is more accurate than another.
They are cultural disconnects. Those that are recently dispossessed cannot imagine how a community can retain a sympathy for a place 1500 years hence.
But, for at least MANY, that land is home. The fulfillment of home place AND home community.
Palestine had that to an extent, though their society was in significant social change as well, and many of the dispossessions of fellaheen that are attributed to Israel’s action were in process independant of Zionism.
In the present, Palestinians need the means for their individuals’ and community health, moreso than they need retribution.
>> Those are your words, not mine. My point that I elaborated on was that Jews were in exile so long and desired to remain coherent that they adopted the view, “my family is my home, my community is my home”, not “my physical place is my home”.
Point taken. My apologies for misunderstanding the context of your comment.
That being said, it still has absolutely nothing to do with the girl’s politicization of a completely a-political quote and test.
It definitely was a commentary on Said’s sense of loss, and the comparative sense of loss of many Jews.
>> It definitely was a commentary on Said’s sense of loss, and the comparative sense of loss of many Jews.
The comparative and, it appears, the very-subjectively more profound sense of loss, yes.
>> The comparative and, it appears, the very-subjectively more profound sense of loss, yes.
More precisely, that should say: The comparative sense of loss of many Jews that is construed, in a highly-subjective way, as being more profound than the loss suffered by Said or anyone else, yes.
Your projecting eljay.
Exile is not about a place looking different after time. It’s about being banned (kept out by force) from a place where you feel at home, and where you have a right to exist.
End of nonsensical tangent.
>> Your projecting eljay.
No, I don’t believe I am. I’ve never been much of a projector. :-)
“I don’t recall ever invoking the “Jews know suffering like no other” theme at all.”
No, you invoke the Jews aer the only ones who matter theme.
I suggested, unlike Phil, that the quote had universal significance. Phil’s comments were entirely that they were of Palestinian experience, and not universal.
witty, sometimes it is hard to comprehend what a dolt you are. the
universal significance of that quote goes without saying. it doesn’t have to be spoken. you just have to get your stab in at phil don’t you. anything to dominate, to compete w/him. One of the tragedies of the story, that I expect you would object to bla bla bla I suggested, unlike Phil, bla bla bla Phil’s comments were entirely that they were of Palestinian experience bla bla bla
why don’t you elaborate on all the other people around here who DIDN’T NOTICE that the experience of exile is also the Jewish experience.
oh my god! really. wow. newsflash and thanks for the revelation witty. so what if phil’s comments were directed at said’s experience. there is nothing in your comment about the palestinian experience other than to denigrate it:
I would hope that he would have acknowledged that a portion of his mourning at that change, was due to his growing older.
There is a cultural disconnect between a more long-term exiled community, the Jewish community, and the recently exiled or partially exiled.
..not really very ‘universal’ of you. then you compare said’s experience to you moving out of your neighborhood?
oy vey
Beautifully put Annie,
Witty is such a narcisist, he really believes that this blog is a movie in which he’s the star commentator.
“My guttural feeling of home….”
Richard, if you want to come over and shoot me, just do it, but this death by lung embolism occasioned by laughing so hard is torturous!
Well, maybe I shouldn’t complain, my humor is often down in the guttural! Here’s a sample: Q: What do you call a guy with a heavy Jewish accent who thinks he’s a fish? A: A guttural percha!
“There is a cultural disconnect between a more long-term exiled community, the Jewish community,”
Oh, Witty, don’t you know that anywhere we hang our head is home?
The diaspora was the best thing that ever happened to us, without it, Judaism would have long dissappeared. Instead, it spread so far as to be pratically world-wide.
But for God’s sake, Witty, if you are in “exile”, go the fuck home to Israel, Go! Please, don’t let us stop you! And yet, like the policeman in Penzance, ” Damn it, you don’t go!”
Richard Witty tells us that “white flight” is the equivalent of “ethnic cleasing”!
That’s it, I’m calling the police if I start laughing up blood! He is trying to kill me with laughter. Oh well, as they say: Levitown is the soul of wit!
Your belittling of Palestinian suffering is nauseating. Your “hearing” “understanding” “healing” rhetoric is vapid, hypocritical nonsense. Had you felt any real empathy or possessed any real understanding of the Palestinian experience, you would never have made such an offensive remark. You are a fraud, lacking even basic human decency, let alone the lofty ideals you blather on about, lecturing people who possess true human feeling and concern for others.
What “offensive” remark are you referring to?
My criticism of Phil’s projection of a quote with universal significance to solely Palestinian?
Here’s one for Witty.
—
Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s drink of the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Spare a part for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth
And when I look into the this faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray blue
Black and white
They don’t look real to me
In fact, we all look so strange
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the uncounted heads
Let’s think of the wavering millions
Who need leading but get gamblers instead
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio
And when I look into this faceless crowd
A swirling mass of grays and
Black and white
They don’t look real to you
Or do we look too strange
Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth
Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth
Let’s drink to the three thousand million
Let’s think of the humble of birth
I perform that song with my band.
An important sentiment.
Universal, like the Said quote on exile, on the experience of exile.
Universal,
Yup, it’s universal, until it relates to the Palestinian experience, then it becomes an “imposition of the Palestinian narrative.”
“I perform that song with my band.”
Richard, please come over and shoot me, so I never, ever have to think about that again. But then again, singing in public takes a lot of gutturals.
Is that The Kinks? I rember hearing it in a doc about The British Miners Strike but I can’t place it.
“I think you are indulging in the fantasy that every tragedy has a demon, and a demon that cannot be forgiven.”
Sorry, I should have something more intelligent to say, I would hope, but, ROTFLMSJAO!!
And I’m sure Hitler and the top Nazis getting a chuckle out of it too, wherever they are! At any rate, the comment tells me I shouldn’t look for them in hell.
Dick Witty,
What home/neighborhood/etc. were you ethnically cleansed from?
Your examples and personal experiences are BS. They do not parallel the Palestinian experience. Furthermore, there are two peoples at war here. One dispossessed the other. The end. That’s what happened.
This was not an accident.
Furthermore, just because someone is a Jew, does not mean they can claim land from people who’ve been living on said land for 100s if not 1000s of years.
You should define what a Jew means. Then define how Jewishness relates to realty. Furthermore, prove you’re a descendant of ancient Jews. Is Jewishness a racial identity?
What is Jewish DNA? It’s all BS.
link to haaretz.com
Palestine was hijacked by European imperialism and stolen by ‘Jewish’ (European) nationalism/colonialism.
Just read your own responses, Witty. You can never deal w/ the issues straight-forwardly. You have to equivocate constantly.
You’re either an idiot, or mentally ill – or both.
The history is nowhere near as simplistic as you describe.
Sorry to say.
That is rich coming from a nakba denier.
Illuminate me. Teach me something. Better yet, study with me.
Better yet, study with me.
Sorry but I have no interest studying your nakba-denying texts with you.
You pick.
“You pick.”
It shouldn’t be any book about the I/P conflict, because RW is pathologically dishonest on the subject. Anything which makes him uncomfortable he treats as an unproven assertion–at best he might “hear” it, but will never admit it is true. So “study” with him on that subject would be a form of psychotherapy with a patient who is in deep denial and probably can’t be helped. You shouldn’t engage in it unless he is willing to pay by the hour, and I think you should charge a very high rate.
Failing an offer of payment for time spent on a useless activity, , I would suggest “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” as a suitable text, unless there is any hidden political meaning in the book which might trigger Witty’s defense mechanisms. I haven’t actually read it, so it might be more than Witty is capable of handling.
Good advice Donald,
Studying with Witty would be like collaborating on a spelling bee with someone with an acute case of stigmatism and color blindness. No matter how many times you prove the sky is blue, he”ll insist it it’s red because he believes it to be so.
“he”ll insist it it’s red because he believes it to be so.”
Shingo, isn’t a bit simpler than that? Isn’t Witty simply defending his material interests? If I am not mistaken, he has family which owns assets in Israel, assets which may become worth less, or even worthless, if things change in Israel, and he has family using Israel as their private, state-supported religious asylum.
It all really comes down to “Don’t rock my boat”
Witty profits by Israel, therefore he defends it. Contemptible, but easily understandable.
Contrary to what Richard Witty seems to suggest, a Jew born in and growing up in Israel can hardly be said to be living in exile. Nor can a Jew born in and growing up in New York or London. A Jew born in Iraq and forced out — that’s exile. And many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in exile, using that very simple, legally recognized meaning. Millions are first or second generation descendants of Palestinians violently forced out of their homes.
No twisted Orwellian newspeak needed, courtesy of apologists for Israeli war crimes or ill-informed, bigoted high school students. To contend that a Jew whose family has lived in Europe for 500 years is a Jew in exile is just false on the facts — but it serves the mythology of Perpetual Oppression, the idea that monsters like Avigdor Lieberman or lesser monsters like Abe Foxman have made the very core tenet of their sad existences.
Note — note — that to say that a Jew born in Europe, living in Europe, and descended from generations of European Jews is not living in exile is emphatically not to deny or reject the aspiration for a Jewish homeland. Jews anywhere can still feel powerfully and personally the burden of centuries of oppression. This Jews do have in common with Palestinians (which is part of what makes for the bitter, cruel irony of Israeli oppression of Palestinians — Israelis have virtually made Palestinians kindred in suffering).
The absurdity of something like this high school student’s delusional idiocy is that it is entirely unnecessary if one wants to support Jewish nationalism, as does Richard Goldstone, for example.
In other words, one can fully acknowledge the full history of Jews, European and Middle Eastern, and from their choose whether to embrace Jewish nationalism or not. But those embracing modern Israel as their preferred form of Zionism must sooner or later come to terms with Israel’s brutal 60 years.
The raw fact is that Israel is the aggressor. A key attendant fact, one making Israel’s ongoing atrocities possible, is that a significant percentage of people in North America and Europe actually believe that it is Israel that is occupied by Palestinians! (A study out of Britain several years ago demonstrated this.) A significant percentage of Americans and Europeans in positions of power are either unwilling or unable to acknowledge Israel’s crimes. The fact remains, however, that it is Israel that daily violates numerous international laws. It is Israel that has engaged in acts of war with at least three of its neighbors in just the past five years. Not surprisingly, those who endlessly prate about the vastly smaller incidence of Palestinian crimes (and of course they exist), ignore both Israel’s far greater current crimes and the very similar crimes committed by Jewish terrorists in the formation of Israel.
“Jews anywhere can still feel powerfully and personally the burden of centuries of oppression.”
And those of you who can’t, try harder! I have a line of home furnishings, called “Designer Stalag” which may help.
“Jews anywhere can still feel powerfully and personally the burden of centuries of oppression.”
Jews anywhere can still feel powerfully and personally the burden of centuries of oppression, therefore they are in sympathy with all oppressed people, and seek never to be an oppresser.
There, fixed it for you.
She didn’t know how to answer it because the question made her feel uncomfortable? I plan to use that excuse for my upcoming exams.
Jesus Christ, if you can’t deal with different perspectives and uncomfortable facts, you shouldn’t be taking AP classes.
That’s the second thing that crossed my mind. Right after: “Well, he didn’t say anything about Israel or Palestine in that piece, but I guess the shoe fits, eh?”
I hope Miss Pearl and all the other students taking the exam were treated fairly. This would require that Miss Pearl be graded strictly on her ability to answer the question that was asked on the the exam.
Percentile rankings are a zero-sum game. If she were graded more highly than she deserved with respect to the College Board’s pre-established scoring criteria for that question, then she would be bumped up in ‘the standings’ at the expense of her competitors. This would be nothing less than theft of the latters’ rewards for their hard work.
This is crazy.
You’re being polite. This can’t be crazy. People are crazy, not objects or natural events.
And RW, who is denying the Jewish experience of exile as an historical event?
To be honest, I’m surprised Said made it on the test in the first place. Instead of bogus claims about PACBI (link to pacbi.org) exercising censorship, we should be addressing the voices and ideas banned from western – and specifically US – discourse. Said was a great intellectual and a great man, with many things to teach even those who disagreed with his democratic and humanistic views on Palestine.
It is the farce of those who wish to subvert democracy and deny freedom of expression on campus crying “don’t silence me” – because the very presence of views like yours makes me feel “uncomfortable”. This young woman has a bright future ahead of her in the hasbara industry and McCarthyist organisations like Campus Watch.
How does an institutional boycott, accompanied by personal taunts and threats to those that oppose the boycott, not amount to an effort at censorship?
Repeat:
1. Individuals without direct state sponsorship are not subject to the boycott. They can speak, publish, perform, etc. without any opposition from the PACBI movement.
2. Artists and writers have received respectful appeals to observe the boycott and respectful expressions of disappointment when they have decided to ignore the boycott. I have seen no threats or taunts against Atwood Ghosh or anyone else.
Gordimer reported being threatened as did Atwood.
and you’ll provide the evidence of such threats, will you? you would think that if someone as important as atwood were threatened, she would have filed a report with the authorities? in any event i wouldn’t likely trust atwood to accurately file a report on the weather. she is one in a line of aloof poseurs selllng her ‘special’ connection to the obscure, the nuanced, the sensitive minutiae that the rest of us miss and trample over, when she is just a mediocrity, an apparatchik for the award-givers and grant writers.
@
witty: Threatened with what? I’m not going to read your crappy books.
“This is crazy. It is an effort to deny the experience of a prominent intellectual who witnessed the Nakba then sought to document it. ”
Again, this is the crazy line. If the test question was about Palestine, then it didn’t belong there. If the question was meant to have universal signficance, as the poetic and very subjective language implies, then it applies to the Jewish historical experience, the Irish historical experience, the Armenian historical experience, the African-American historical experience, as well.
>> If the question was meant to have universal signficance, as the poetic and very subjective language implies, then it applies to the Jewish historical experience, the Irish historical experience, the Armenian historical experience, the African-American historical experience, as well.
You are such a drama queen. The test, according to the article, “requires students to read excerpts of poetry and prose and compare them to other works they have studied in class.”
An excerpt of prose was presented. It contained no reference to Palestine or Israel. Rather than compare it to other works she studied in class, the girl suffered trauma. And rather than present yourself as a human being instead of a victim, you took a neutral passage about exile and turned it into a sob-story about Jewish suffering. “Remember the Holocaust!”
Sheesh, what a drama queen…
Again,
The seeking to return to some mythic past (now the myth of idyllic Palestine) is a reactionary approach, a past-oriented approach.
It differs from the progressive which is entirely future oriented, goal-oriented.
“The seeking to return to some mythic past (now the myth of idyllic Palestine) is a reactionary approach, a past-oriented approach.”
What about the myth of the Jewish people wanting to return to the mythic nation of Israel?
“The seeking to return to some mythic past (now the myth of idyllic Palestine) is a reactionary approach, a past-oriented approach”
Excuse me, Richard? Yes, God forbid anyone should try to return to the mythic past!!!
Richard how stupid do you think we are?
The seeking to return to some mythic past (now the myth of idyllic Palestine) is a reactionary approach, a past-oriented approach.
well, if princess pobrecita shared your critcisim of the text, she could have included that criticism in her essay rather than climbing up onto the cross for yet another narcissistic auto-crucifixion. but, no, she shan’t, because her sensibilities were bruised. the audacity to include Said (an Arab! do such people exist outside of suicide bombers?) in the AP-approved canon was just too much for muffy to bear.
Though she had just 40 minutes to write the required essay, Pearl froze when she encountered the Said text. “I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t comfortable answering it,” she said. She decided to put a paragraph objecting to the quote’s inclusion at the top of her essay. “I find it really inappropriate to put a political question like that on a test,” she said she wrote.
it was you, muffy, who turned the essay-writing contest into a political event. and i thought that the young were supposedly incapable of dishonesty.
She could have.
Phil is the individual that extracted a political significance to the encounter.
Witty, read the article sometime.
Using this quote in the AP exam “is very reflective of the widespread use of education and testing as a platform for anti-Israel propaganda,” she told the Forward.
Or are you to busy spinning the green yarn for your trip?
The green yarn idea is uniquely artful. If I had money and time to travel to Israel, I’d do it, even organize it.
Don’t get trivial. The significance of the idea is three fold:
1. To remind the world of where the actual boundary is
2. To appeal to color coding of the line, and to Hamas’ color code, thereby pressing them to actually publicly confirm their “willingness” to recognize Israel.
3. To appeal to the Israeli orthodox sentiment in which an eruv is created delineating “home” as in simulating within a house for definitions of some prohibited activities during sabbath.
It is artful, peaceful, quiet, will attract attention, and will not harm a soul in any way.
The Belin demonstrations still have rock-throwers and wire-cutters, that are filmed and conflict with the assertion that the demonstrations are “non-violent”.
A green thread harms noone literally. It is Bradley Burston’s praise for the Palestinian flag carrier, nowhere near anyone with a mask or rocks.
The green yarn idea is uniquely artful. If I had money and time to travel to Israel, I’d do it, even organize it.
Why not organize a fund-raiser? If it is a sincere effort with noble intentions, surely you don’t believe in your failure to do so. So, is it not worth your time or are you simply not bothered following up yourself to your suggestion to others?
>> The green yarn idea is uniquely artful.
>> A green thread harms noone literally.
It harms no one but the person placing the yarn, when he gets a high-speed tear-gas canister in the head for engaging in “suspicious activity” that may or may not constitute an existential threat to Israel. The proof? Green is the colour of Hamas, an Islamist terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel!
The idea is a joke. The oppressed must not rise up against their oppressors – they must meekly scatter green yarn and hope that the oppressor will find it charming enough to cease his oppression.
If it changes hearts and minds, that is FAR superior to throwing rocks.
that is FAR superior to throwing rocks.
Indeed, when Israeli bulldozers come into Palestinian territory to raze some farms or demolish Palestinian houses, the Israeli hearts will just melt at the sight of green yarn laying at the feet of the accompanying tanks and vehicles.
Great idea indeed Witty. When will you take the green yarn laying charge then?
>> If it changes hearts and minds, that is FAR superior to throwing rocks.
Not plowing up farmland and crops, not destroying homes and water reservoirs, not shooting peaceful protesters (whether Palestinians or those of other nationalities), not buildling illegal settlements in occupied territories, not jailing or assassinating the moderate leaders who could be the sought-after bargaining partners, not constantly demonizing and denigrating the people you are oppressing: All those things ALSO change hearts and minds.
Let the Israelis, too, make the “better argument”.
“It harms no one but the person placing the yarn, when he gets a high-speed tear-gas canister in the head for engaging in “suspicious activity” that may or may not constitute an existential threat to Israel. The proof? Green is the colour of Hamas, an Islamist terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel!”
To quote Homer Simpson : “It’s funny ‘cos it’s true!”
“If it changes hearts and minds, that is FAR superior to throwing rocks. ”
The only heart you and Israel will ever win is though organ harvesting.
No, the political significance of the ‘encounter’ is a creation of the critics of the essay. Phil did not criticize the essay, start a ‘Facebook’ page devoted to critics of the essay, nor give interviews to the ‘The Forward’.
Phil is the individual that extracted a political significance to the encounter.
you mean in response to “I find it really inappropriate to put a political question like that on a test,”
the quote in itself could apply to anyone. it made the girl uncomfortable because of who wrote it. had it been written in a different time by a jewish person her response might have been different. the girl is the individual that extracted a political significance…don’t blame phil.
Edward Said always claimed he was born in Jerusalem when the facts are he was born in Egypt.
Like Arafat, another liar
Oh Shalimar, there you go again, You are a regular energizer bunny.
Two articles that demolish Justus Weiner’s crappy “research” about E. Said, that earned him 2 minutes of notoriety:
Defamation, Revisionist Style
Weiner’s argument crumbles with even mild scrutiny
BTW, even Weiner the hatchet job man concedes that Said was born in Jerusalem during a “family visit” to the city, but (despite ample evidence to the contrary) that he never actually lived there.
You’re missing the point. Said is not a real Palestinian, just as Phil is not a real Jew. There are standards, you know, and Schmear is the guardian of those standards.
Let me get this straight, marc: Phil is not a real Jew because he sides with the Palestinians, and Said was not a real Palestinian because he sided with the Palestinians. How can siding with the Palestinians get you both de-Jewed and de-Palestinianed?
How can siding with the Palestinians get you both de-Jewed and de-Palestinianed?
You’re getting warmer, shmuel, but i sense an emotional impediment to true enlightenment. If you can repeat the following statements senza emozione, the prize will be yours: “there is no ‘Palestine’. there are no ‘Palestinians’.”
There, can’t you feel the sense of calmness and simultaneous adrenaline rush of moral purity? yes, it’s a bit of a paradox, but zionism is strange and wonderful fruit.
The fruit grows on a very old stem. Hecataeus of Abdera, writing presumably after conversations with the Jews of Alexandria c.300, remarks that Moses led his people into ‘what is now called Judaea, a land utterly without inhabitant’.
i’m sure if Shmuel shot up some ziocaine he’d understand perfectly.
This is the neighbourhood Edward Said grew up in:
link to palestineremembered.com
“Jewish gangs attacking the neighborhood (May 1st, 1948)”
link to palestineremembered.com
In defense of this student, I have to say I used to do something similar on Algebra tests. I didn’t like them so I would just ignore the questions and write a small essay as to why I didn’t think I should answer them. Plus there was something faintly Arabiste to Algebra that made me uncomfortable so…
once i was tasked w/writing an essay on evolution in my senior year of high school and i wrote this diatribe on adam and eve and the garden of eden. my teacher wasn’t buying it for one minute and it was the only F i ever received.
“something faintly Arabiste to Algebra ”
Faintly? The very name is Arabic. It was invented in Baghdad by al-Khwārizmī who was probably an Iranian! Algebra is a source of terrorism.
All algebra teachers should be locked up and tortured for their anti-Semitism and support of Al-Qa’ida.
Do Israelis use Arabic numerals, or is there a Hebrew system? If so, do they call them Arabic numerals?
>> Do Israelis use Arabic numerals, or is there a Hebrew system? If so, do they call them Arabic numerals?
Perhaps they’re referred to as “peace numerals”, and they come in only one colour. You guess it: “Yarn green”. :-)
I hear they use wrist-sundials ala Fred Flintstone. Very trendy.
I’m makin me a word salad, I’m going heavy on the season,it don’t really matter if there is a rhyme or just a bit of reason. I’m makin a word salad, just throwin any old thing in, if you cannot understand it,well that’s your venal sin. Next croutons…
Pretty good, demize. ;-)
Sins are venial= easily forgiven. Some things and some people are venal = totally for sale.
Uhh,yeah. Thanks professor. I dedicate that to the harbinger of hasbara haiku. You wanna tell me I misused harbinger now? Thanks MRW.
A number of points:
Phil- The girl’s name was given as Alyssa and not Ayelet. Please correct this. (Unless you are privy to her Hebrew name as Ayelet.)
If this had been a history AP, then the ability of a student to deal with the author’s identity would have been “part of the test”. But it was an English AP and thus the lack of elasticity on the part of Ms. Perl does not highlight her lack of proficiency in the relevant topic.
The article is very specific that it is “unusual” for the author’s nationality to be included in the description of the author of the text. In the article it stated that all of the other authors on this year’s test were quoted without identifying their nationality and the last time an author’s nationality was included was two years ago.
my bad: Alyssa Blumenthal and Ayelet Perl. Sorry.
>> The article is very specific that it is “unusual” for the author’s nationality to be included in the description of the author of the text. In the article it stated that all of the other authors on this year’s test were quoted without identifying their nationality and the last time an author’s nationality was included was two years ago.
So the identification of Mr. Said’s nationality is not an exclusive event, just an “unusual” one. Yes, somehow, this rendered a 16-year-old college girl incapable of reading his eloquent, neutral, inclusive quote and comparing it “to other works … studied in class”. It lead her, instead, to “have the impression that Israel is the one attacking [the Palestinians]”.
That little girl is messed up from far too much indoctrination.
The article is very specific that it is “unusual” for the author’s nationality to be included in the description of the author of the text. In the article it stated that all of the other authors on this year’s test were quoted without identifying their nationality and the last time an author’s nationality was included was two years ago.
That’s hardly something to be excited about.
it isn’t true either sherbrsi and wondering jew probably knows that. he’s being deceptive again. from the text:
But the test’s description of the late Columbia University humanities professor as a “Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic” has led some pro-Israel students to object that the test has been politicized.
“I was really startled to see that quote because both of the practice questions didn’t mention the writers’ nationalities,” said Ayelet Pearl, a senior at New York’s Bronx High School of Science. “For me including this one clearly had political implications.”
2 practice questions. hmmmm that is different than WJ’s allegation of: all of the other authors on this year’s test were quoted without identifying their nationality which is a lie. from the article:
Another College Board spokeswoman, Sheila Jamison, responded, “The characterization of AP exam questions as typically excluding nationalities of writers quoted is not accurate. In fact, it is typical that when an author is cited their heritage is cited. The sample AP Exam questions demonstrate this.”
so according to the spokesperson even the sample AP Exam questions use identification which includes nationalities. maybe this student practiced w/some other test exam. anyway the real problem is this:
Pearl stressed that she objected to the identification accompanying Said’s quote about exile. that would be “Palestinian American” as ‘nationality’. perhaps for students who’ve been raised on ziocaine wrapping their heads around the words “palestine and nationality” together…is an overwhelmingly radical idea.
annie- this is the quote from the article by Debra Nussbaum Cohen:
“In fact, the other five writers quoted in the free response section of this year’s AP English Literature and Composition exam — now posted on the College Board’s website — are listed simply by name. The most recent example available of an author being listed with more than a name goes back two years, to the 2008 version of the test, which describes Anita Desai as an Indian author.”
Maybe you should read the relevant article to its end before you start yelling, “lie”!
For anyone interested, this is the exact question that Perl objected to:
Apparently she couldn’t find her way past the first word ,…. “Palestinian”. The question is entirely benign and non-political, and if she can’t get past that one word to write a short essay on the topic, then she needs better schooling before she attempts college, otherwise it will be mostly wasted on her.
>> The question is entirely benign and non-political …
Oh, I don’t know. Now that I see it in its entire context, it’s pretty clear that Israel is the one attacking the Palestinians. ;-)
I shouldn’t joke: Clearly the suffering she has endured during her long-term exile from the Promised Land has affected her quite profoundly. Palestinians can only dream about that kind of suffering and trauma. :-)
She should be asked to memorize ( unless she has already done so) this book and she can quote from this book instead of from of Said in all her AP exam-
Rabbi to Publish Book on Jewish Supremacy
Tuesday January 20, 2004
link to atheism.about.com
Written by Rabbi Saadya Grama — an alumnus of Beth Medrash Govoha, the renowned yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J. —
“Rabbi Yosef Blau, also writing in Forward, ” about the book
“Rabbi Grama accepts the notion that non-Jews are created not fully in God’s image (tzelem elokim). This is an extreme formulation of the approach of a stream of Jewish thinkers who see the Jew as a higher form of creation beyond that of human. Grama, however, is not an advocate of acting against the gentile. On the contrary, his message is the need to separate from a hostile, intrinsically antisemitic world. He criticizes secular education and denies that there are moral values in gentile wisdom. Integrating into the non-Jewish environment has failed to eradicate antisemitism, and a return to the traditional low-profile ghetto Jew is seen as appropriate. “.
Said by virtue of being a Palestinian advocate has lost any relevance to the world at large. That understanding of the literature will go a long way to make this girl accecpt this rabbinical teaching in 21st century.