Traditionally, I am a fan of editorials that challenge conventional beliefs. That being said, Henry M Bowles III is far and away the worst columnist I have ever had the misfortune of reading.
It's reached the point that I no longer blame Bowles for his misguided, non-sensical rants. Rather, I blame myself for reading any article situated under the profile-picture of Bowles and his Barry Melrose mullet.
Henry M. Bowles III or "The Trifecta", has an admirable willingness to address hot topics. The problem is that his stance on said topics is always wrong. Completely wrong. How can one be wrong on an issue with no right answer? Simple: They can be shitty Henry M. Bowles "The Third." He's more of a bitch than a bitch.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
There have been many excellent responses to the sickening article I referenced yesterday by Henry Bowles the III, but I wanted to excerpt this one because it is the most humorous:
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4 comments:
The whole point of his article is that there is no cabbalism. He opens by saying that it's a myth, but that the myth is kept alive because of their program of tying the religion to state nationalism.
The only claim that is clearly false is that there was no anti-Semitism in the Middle East--everything else is debatable. You're way to fast at calling people anti-Semites. You try to compare the anti-Semitism of Holocaust deniers with someone who is making an argument about nationalist identity, perhaps the most contentious concepts that exists!
For someone to have the audacity to tell a people that have been exiled and/or persecuted across the globe that they should not invest faith in a solution to this problem, i.e. a state that will provide asylum to them when they are persecuted, is offensive. If you look at most of the comments underneath Bowles' article, you will see that many of Bowles's points are disputed correctly. You are absolutely wrong in saying the only thing up for debate is that anti-Semitism never existed in the Middle East (which itself is a pretty big statement to make, wouldn't you say?). As someone on that page points out, and as a friend of mine wrote in a letter to the editor that hopefully will be published, Bowles's suggests that there are not comparable actions on the part of Muslims to increase student identification with an Arab country. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia
donated $20 million dollars to set up a Middle East Studies Center at the
University of Arkansas; he gave $8.1 million dollars to Georgetown; $11
million dollars to Cornell; $5 million dollars to MIT, as just one example. Another comment points out that the Muslim Cultural Students Association fully supports the Palestinian Authority. Should these Muslims be asked to "divest" their identity from various Arab states as Bowles suggests Jews should? Finally, as a letter writer today pointed out in the Forum, Bowles does not understand the nature of Hillel. Your suggesting he is only trying to help the Jews by telling them to act less like a cabal is either disingenuous our naive. That no one expects Muslims to disavow their support from even those nations that are most guilty of state-sponsored terrorism suggests that Bowles is applying an odd standard to Jews who support Israel. Whether he means it or not, the article wreaks of age-old anti-Semitic themes. That it has offended many people both by its errors, its audacity, and its stupidity hopefully has given you a little bit of pause in your quest to prove Israel rogue nation number one.
Once again, he never says they act like a cabal. He says there is no cabal. He just says it looks like a cabal. There is a big difference.
Finally, I think the MCSA should divest from Muslim states. They should stay on the cultural not political nationalist side. Probably most of the activists there are foreigners.
I remember my Muslim Pakistani friend's grandmother talking about how he was going to go become a fighter pilot for Pakistan. Of course he just nodded and smiled; he's politically assimilated and would never leave the country. Yet the Jewish kid from middle school wants to fight for Israel. It's weird to want to be involved in another country's military.
I will refer you to the words of a writer in the Daily regarding your claim that Bowles does not legitimize the cabal stereotype:
To suggest that Jews bring anti-Semitism and hatred upon themselves by attempting to create a safe homeland in Israel is to validate terrorist rhetoric. There is a marked difference between showing peaceful allegiance toward one’s homeland and condoning state-sponsored and state-tolerated terrorism.
Bowles has indeed suggested that Jews ask for this image if they support the state of Israel. He also makes a point of criticizing AIPAC for being "very powerful." His rhetoric is a pretty typical allusion to anti-Semitic cabalism. It is the marginal anti-Semite who actually tries to prove the nonsense that there is a Jewish cabal; Bowles's tactic is to say that if Jews don't break ties with Israel, they should expect to be thought of as a cabal. Arthur Butz has a similar tactic, which is to imply that Jews have lied about the history of the Holocaust by shrouding his unproven claims in the rhetoric of historical narrative.
It's weird to want to be involved in another country's military.
So immigrants to America who fought in WWI and WWII were being "weird"? Maybe they just wanted to defend the free way of life of the new homeland to which they had immigrated. I find it a little disturbing that you don't recognize once Israel's democratic form of government, as a reason it is allied with the U.S. and as yet another reason Jews have a natural tie to the country of Israel.
We have long ago reached an impasse on this subject. I'm sorry you cannot find it in yourself to at least try and understand the appeal to Jews of a state that seeks to solve the problem of historic persecution of a people, and it's odd that you don't seem to find worth in Israel's democratic form of government since it is the only one in that region. Nor do you seem willing to admit that Bowles spouts misinformation throughout the article to support the legimization of a stereotype against Jews, so I will say the end on my comments on this.
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