Jane Kramer Can Kiss My Shiny Black Bessarabian Ass

The other day, my wife, with four and a half dollars of my hard earned pay burning a hole in her pocket, bought a copy of New Yorker magazine.

My earliest memories of this periodical go back to my childhood, in my doctor’s waiting room, and wondering why were there cartoons that weren’t funny. I remember telling my mother that it looked like you had to be pretty rich to afford the stuff that appeared in its advertisements.

I wish that my wife had spent the money on Charmin. That at least can offer more comfort in the ass wipe department.

There was an article, by one Jane Kramer, where she continued to beat a dead horse over an episode that should be a non-issue at this point. It concerned a Barnard College/Columbia University (the same school that invited Persian pus pocket, A-Jad to speak) professor, Nadia Bar El-Haj, who was granted tenure in spite of objections by some, based on academic reasons.

She had also authored a book,”Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashion in Israeli Society”, which was felt to contain a politicized agenda and attendant baggage and I’m told faulty methodology.

In Kramer’s world El-Haj was unjustly vilified because she is a “Palestinian-American” and was victimized by some monolithic Zionist conspiracy. A sub-text I pick up is that Kramer has such a woodie for the prof, I’d be afraid to leave my toupee lying around in fear it would be munched into oblivion. The bone in Kramer’s craw is a petition that circulated in an attempt to deny El-Haj tenure.

Her defense of El-Haj is a smear job. She ascribes opposition to the tenure as a conspiracy of Zionist subtrefuge. She picks and chooses certain Jews to laud but paints any one who disagrees with her and defends Israel with one brush. Kramer also elevates the pedestals of anti-Semites Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said (who proudly threw rocks at Israeli troops as they voluntarily evacuated from Lebanon in 200).

Kramer expouses El-Haj’s book as a definitive position and condemns any reason to oppose her as bigotry. That her article omits or incorrectly states facts which substantiate legitimate reasons for the pettition are inexcusable and testify to shoddy and prejuidicial journalism.

Not being readily familiar with El-Haj (the child of an American mother and Palestinian father) or her book I decided to pick up a copy. I read the first five pages and put it down.

She refers to Israel as a colonial or colonial/Zionist enterprise at least a dozen times in the first five pages. She starts out by proposing that archeology in Israel is nothing more than a political tool to falsley connect Judaism and Jews to the land and subjugate indigenous peoples. The purpose of her book is to go out and prove this.

Here is a book that is politically motivated, being defended by Kramer by attacking its critics for being politically motivated.

That’s not ironic, it’s nauseating.

Here’s a life lesson for these two nimrods:

Zionism was not a monolithic entity. There were religious Zionists, Socialist Zionists, Communist Zionists, Orientalist Zionists and others. Zionism is not a colonial movement, it is a liberation movement of national self determination. It is the belief that Jews have the right to their own country in the Land of Israel. If you feel that Israel is legitimate as a Jewish nation you are a Zionist.

Criticizing the policies of an Israeli government is one thing. When you denigrate its legitimacy by calling it a “colonial” enterprise, you question its right to exist. That gives creedence to murdering its citizens. A society that repeatedly rescues and integrates people of color in peril of anihilation in their native African and Asian countries is hardly racist either.

For this, Jane Kramer can kiss my ass, and Nadia Bar El-Haj can blow it out of hers.