BOTH BARRELS

I can't recommend this Juan Cole post enough. It's both a devastating takedown of Likudnik carnival-barker Daniel Pipes and an excellent explication of the hardline pro-Israeli intimidation campaign in which Pipes is a soldier.

Cole:

The thing that most pains me in all this is the use of the word "antisemite." Pipes already had to settle one lawsuit, by Douglas Card, for throwing the word around about him irresponsibly.

Israel is not being helped by extremists like Pipes and his associates (see below). It is being harmed, and its very survival is being placed in doubt by aggressive annexationist policies, and by brutal murders and repression, which Pipes and his associates support to the hilt.

Moreover, among the real targets of Pipes and Co. [are] liberal and leftist Jews. Indeed, the article attacking me begins with a vicious attack on Joel Beinin, a past president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes are encouraging a new kind of antisemitism, which sees it as unacceptable that Jews should be liberals or should criticize Likud Party policies.

I was speaking recently with a director of a DC-based non-partisan Middle East research institute, and he noted that the effects of Pipes' smear campaigns were already being felt in academia. Many prominent Middle East Studies departments are beginning to shy away from research into issues which could be construed or represented in any way as anti-Semitic. This at a time when academic work on the thornier issues of Middle East politics and identity is most sorely needed. Tragic.