Re: U. of Michigan pressured to halt publication of Joel Kovel book

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 11, 2007, at 2:28 PM, David B. Shemano wrote:

> I did want to note the irony (if that's the right word) of Doug
> Henwood complaining when anti-Israel critics are accused of being
> Nazis, and Jim Devine contemporaneously calling Israel  "one of the
> worst kinds of ethnic nationalist regimes currently on earth,"
> which I think a reasonable reader would interpret as a Nazi
> analogy.  So apparently it is unfair rhetoric for somebody to call
> your side Nazis, but okay rhetoric to call the other side Nazis,
> and if anybody calls you a Nazi for calling them a Nazi, that
> proves they are a Nazi.

Wow, that's really dumb. I'm almost speechless at how utterly dumb
that is. No one called Israel "Nazi," and it's a plain statement of
fact that Israel is an ethnic-nationalist regime. What else do you
call a state that provides subsidized housing to people born in
Brooklyn because they're the right "nationality" (and "Jewish" is a
nationality unlike any other, but leave that aside) yet evicts people
whose families have been in the area for centuries because they're
the wrong "nationality"? I'd think a libertarian might object to that
use of state power.

Doug