[lbo-talk] Todd Gitlin on "Incoherent Left" - full article

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Jan 28 10:50:33 PST 2011


On Fri, 28 Jan 2011, Doug Henwood wrote:


>> Just a sidenote. The most crushing indictment of Israel and the Zionist
>> project I ever read was Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish
>> People. It was published in English by Verso. So I am completely
>> unmoved by hints from Gitlin that Verso is somehow under the shackels
>> of the Zionist lobby of NYC.
>
> That would be preposterous. They've published Finkelstein, for god's sake.

It is preposterous. Gitlin actually implies the opposite -- that Verso isn't pro Israel enough:

<quote>

It's good to represent the ex-colonial world, but why a Palestinian poet who heralds "the glory lost since Umayyad conquests"? Why reproduce bumper-sticker slogans from groups like the Crips and Bloods, while omitting Albert Camus? Why may kibbutzniks not apply? Why honor the Sartre who declined the Nobel but not the Sartre who for decades defended the State of Israel's right to exist?

<unquote>

It's also kind of impossible to imagine such a charge based on his latest book:

<quote>

Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. His latest book, with Liel Leibovitz, is "The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election" (Simon & Schuster, 2010).

<unquote>

But even thought this charge is false, who cares. It's an rubber-neckingly appalling display. He's always been whiny, irritating and pompous but here it's like radioactive decay.

Michael



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