Terrorism's false numbers

Professor John L. Esposito runs a slick operation at Georgetown with $20 million of funding from Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The shared agenda of these two is to make us all feel guilty for having wondered, after 9/11, about Saudis, Muslims, and the contemporary teaching of Islam. Esposito now has a new book (with co-author Dalia Mogahed, who runs something called the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies), bearing the pretentious title Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. It's based on gleanings from the Gallup World Poll.

The core argument of the book is that only 7 percent of Muslims are "politically radicalized," and that "about 9 in 10 Muslims are moderate." On what does this factoid rest? The authors explain (pp. 69-70):

Confusion at Columbia

On Friday, the Columbia Spectator ran an article by its "news staff" under the headline: "Yiddish Prof Named Acting Director of Israel Institute After False Media Speculation." The Yiddish professor is Jeremy Dauber, and the institute is the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. Mazel tov to Professor Dauber.

The article then adds the following:

Last week, the New York Sun reported that sociology professor Yinon Cohen was appointed permanent director of the institute. The article quoted several professors upset by Columbia's decision to appoint Cohen, who signed a letter condemning Israel's policies concerning 2002 military operations in Gaza. The Sun also wrote that it found the information about Cohen on a blog named Sandbox, written by academic Martin Kramer who obtained his master's degree in history from Columbia in 1976.

[Columbia Vice President for Arts and Sciences Nicholas] Dirks said the Sun's article was completely false. "I don't know what the basis for the attack on Professor Cohen is," he said.

Cohen came to Columbia in fall 2007 as a visiting professor from Tel Aviv University. While Cohen was never appointed director of any institute at Columbia, he recently received the endowed position of Yosef Haim Yerushalmi professor of Israel and Jewish studies - a name similar to that of the institute, which may have been the source of confusion.

The report leaves the vague impression that I contributed to that confusion.

Mearsheimer, Walt, and "cold feet"

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt appear at Princeton University tonight, to promote their book The Israel Lobby. I've held back while other critics have had their say, and many of them have done a splendid job. But I don't think anyone has understood the neat sleight of hand the authors performed in moving from article to book. The innovation in The Israel Lobby is their "cold feet" thesis about the Israeli genesis of the Iraq war.

But first, remember why pinning the Iraq war on the "Israel lobby" is so important to Mearsheimer and Walt. Their main argument isn't that the Palestinians are paying a terrible price for that support. In most quarters, that draws a simple shrug. Instead, the duo claim that Americans are paying the price for US support for Israel. They paid it on 9/11, and they're paying it now in Iraq. The killers of 9/11 set out on their mission because of their rage against unconditional US backing for Israel; and the pro-Israel lobby got America into the Iraq war because it served Israel's interests, not America's. America is bleeding so that Israel can avoid doing what it should have done years ago: give the Palestinians their state. And it's because Americans are dying that Israel shouldn't be indulged anymore.

Whacked by a Party Hack

Ira N. Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, has taken a whack at my recent op-ed on Hillary Clinton's Foreign Affairs essay. In that piece, I examined Hillary's text, I decoded its message on Israel and the Palestinians, and I suggested that it deviated from pronouncements she's made elsewhere. Forman calls my exegesis a "tawdry political stunt... filled with shaky logic and intellectual dishonesty."

But he doesn't attempt to refute my exegesis of her essay, which seems to echo the pressure-Israel-and-push-for-Palestine preferences of the foreign policy establishment. Instead, he does two things. First, he hails Hillary as "a great supporter of Israel throughout her career." He cites her "impeccable voting record" in the Senate, her advocacy for Red Cross recognition of Magen David Adom, her accolades in the Orthodox newspaper The Jewish Press, and so on.