You will forgive me for changing the subject header. Or maybe not. No matter.
Do you really think I'm a 'cold war liberal'? That I automatically react negatively to 'serious criticism of Israel' or seek to 'police the bounds of acceptable debate'? That I stigmatize Finkelstein for a focus on the ME?
I have to wonder about your capacity for elementary reading comprehension. (About others' there is no ambiguity, nor any point in dialog.)
Talk about insinuations. But thanks so much for separating the ad hominem's from the 'generally correct.'
I would say the real effort to 'police,' however pathetic and transparent, comes from descriptions of those critical of zionism as uncritical, solely when we object to a creepy fixation on jews or judaism, if not worse. In the anti-Israel crusade, there is no room for such considerations. Too PC, I guess.
Your last sentence obliges me to ask, do you really regard Israel as analogous to "the state of some other racial group"?
See what I mean?
mbs
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Pradeep seems to me generally correct here, without the ad hominems. The recent discussion of Cockburn on lbo-talk evinces a sort of antisemite-baiting that polices the bounds of acceptable debate, to avoid the "preoccupation" that a Chomsky shows (or is it a Different Thing with Chomsky?). When one comes to speak of Israel and American policy, one must never be -- as apparently Cockburn and Finkelstein, to their everlasting shame, occasionally are -- "bereft of relevant context." That would be to regard Israel as one would the state of some other racial group. --CGE