Conference on "Progress & Peril of Historic Sites"

When the public thinks of imperiled historic sites, it probably has in mind the venerable urban structure facing the wrecking ball or the battlefield contending with sprawl and encroachment. Perhaps a stately mansion has fallen on hard times: notably, Edith Wharton's The Mount, caught in a scissors between colossally poor budgetary choices and general hard times last year. Most recently, we learned of the crisis at the far less well-known Montgomery Place in Annandale-on-Hudson, which Historic Hudson Valley was reputedly thinking of selling.

What the public perhaps does not understand is that virtually every historic site is facing hard times and harder choices. The small ones are most in jeopardy: under-resourced to begin with, many have to contend with unsustainable business models, soaring costs for upkeep, inadequate display and storage facilities for incoherent collections, and presentation models and missions more suited to the era of the Model T and Life magazine than Facebook and the mashup.

Preservation professionals have in recent years heatedly debated the very need for our profusion of small house museums. Has the genre outlived its purpose? And even if not, do we really need so many of them? Could not their limited resources be put to better use? Would the few genuinely significant articles in their collections not be better sold off or distributed to institutions that know how to conserve, study, and present them to larger audiences? It comes to resemble the debates about social history a generation or more ago: what is the real benefit, for either the researcher or the rare reader, of yet another study of a single English village?

The Worcester Historical Museum and Historic New England are sponsoring a conference to deal with precisely these issues next week:

Can You Change In Time? Progress & Peril of Historic Sites

A one-day conference
Click here for the agenda.
December 3, 2009

Thursday, December 3, 2009 9 to 5 P.M.
at Trinity Lutheran Church,
73 Lancaster Street, Worcester, MA 01609

The state of historic house museums and sites has been a topic of increasing concern to professionals, volunteers, and community leaders for nearly a decade. Small budgets impacted by difficult financial times, level or diminishing visitation, and confusing stories herald the need for change — of message or mission. Is it time to change? Is there an alternative for your historic house/site?

Our own local organizations are quite aware of the challenge and determined to act sooner rather than later. For example, the Amherst Historical Society & History Museum, whose board I recently joined, held its own public-input and visioning session already at the end of the spring. Representatives of the major sites in Amherst and Northampton will be making presentations in Worcester. I'll be there just in order to watch and learn. I hope to report back here in the near future.

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving again.

Because I put up a fairly lengthy post last year on the "first Thanksgiving" and its history and foodways, I'll take a somewhat different tack here.

It is a interesting holiday this year in particular because my co-teacher Laura Wenk and I, in our course on "learning how to think and teach like a historian," have included a unit on the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving, built around The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony, by James and Patricia Scott Deetz. Student background knowledge appears to be about what one would expect: a general conviction that history idealized and transfigured the Pilgrims, coupled with heightened sensibility to the wrongs done to Native Americans; belief in the overwhelming influence of religion in that day: beyond that, little if any specific knowledge in most cases.

Both the Deetzes' book and Nathaniel Philbrick's more recent and much more popular (indeed, bestselling) Mayflower (from which we assigned an excerpt) make the key point that the typical vision of Colonial New England begins with the Pilgrims and then commences again only on the eve of the Revolution, with nothing much in between. For Philbrick,

the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving. When we look to how the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags maintained more than fifty years of peace and how that peace suddenly erupted into one of the deadliest wars ever fought on American soil, the history of Plymouth Colony becomes something altogether new, rich, troubling, and complex. Instead of the study we already know, it becomes the story we need to know (p. xii)

For the Deetzes,

While we use the 'first Thanksgiving' as our point of departure, and consider the myths, familiar to millions of Americans. that have emerged concerning the 'Pilgrims,' we then look back to the events that led up to the settlement of Plymouth Colony and, more significantly, the years following that event through 1691, providing glimpses of life in the colony. These years are particularly important because to large numbers of people the early settlers sailed across the Atlantic on the Mayflower, had a big dinner the following fall, and disappeared. In truth, Plymouth Colony has an ongoing story that is worth recounting in all its colorful detail, enlivened and expanded by contemporary archaeology, cultural research, and living history. (p. xv)

Philbrick draws upon a panoply of primary and secondary textual sources to craft a highly engaging narrative with a strong political lesson, but we chose the Deetzes' book because its use of a wider variety of source material—including court records, probate inventories, architectural and archaeological evidence, folkways and material culture—as well as its analysis of the challenges and techniques of museological portrayal at Plimoth Plantation, seemed ideally suited to the methodological concerns of the course. As a case study of social and cultural history in an early modern rural setting, it moreover forms a perfect complement to our earlier explorations of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale and Natalie Zemon Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre.

We've already given the students a rundown on some features of the original feast: venison and probably waterfowl but no turkey; lots of beer and gunfire. The feast marked a traditional English harvest festival and was in no sense a special day of thanksgiving; indeed, the original one-paragraph account does not even mention prayer. We've asked the students to discuss the first reading assignment when they visit their families for the holiday this week.

It should be interesting, and I hope to report later on some of the results.

In the meantime, a few links to Thanksgiving-related topics:

• Art Buchwald's classic attempt to explain Thanksgiving (le Jour de Merci Donnant) to the French: "Le Grande Thanksgiving"

• Mark Knoller, "History of the Presidential Turkey Pardon" (from CBS)

• Frank James, "How FDR Tried to Make Thanksgiving Arrive Earlier" (NPR)

• "Songs for Stuffing: A Thanksgiving Mix" (NPR)

You've Got (Hate) Mail! (and why this drivel isn't as far from mainstream discourse as you might hope)

I was trying to recall whether this is the first occasion on which I have received anonymous hate mail. Now that I stop to think about it, I guess I have, on a couple of occasions (obviously, I must not have paid it much attention), and it was standard neo-Nazi stuff.

This item reached me in late September, but more pressing matters kept me from posting about it. At any rate, I walked into the main office one day and found only one item in my mailbox. The battered and opened envelope, bearing both San Francisco and Springfield postmarks, had been sent to two other addresses—one of which incorrectly identified me as working at the University of Massachusetts—before reaching me at Hampshire.

It contained the usual pseudo-scientific Holocaust denial material, charging that eyewitness and subsequent accounts of the extermination process and sundry atrocities were implausible fabrications:

Two things were noteworthy:

1) I evidently earned a place on this mailing list by virtue of teaching a course on antisemitism. NB: The official one-paragraph catalogue entry did not even mention the Holocaust by name. It did, however, include a reference to the contemporary Middle East. (The longer description of the course, which discussed both in a nuanced manner, was not even posted at the time.)

2) Unlike most such screeds, this one was written from a pseudo-left-wing perspective, for it connects US denazification efforts and purported disinformation with anti-communism and denounces the Holocaust as "a late-colonialist myth" whose only purpose in to justify Israeli expansionism and brutality:

It never occurred to me that, by teaching about the undeniable existence of an extermination facility at Treblinka more than half a century ago, I might harm someone on the other side of the globe today. Then again: obviously, these are crude ravings; in that sense, they are insignificant.

What is not as obvious but in fact highly significant is that the anti-Israel rationale embodied in this form of Holocaust denial merely lies at the extreme end of a broad continuum of discourse—but a continuum nonetheless—that stretches well into the realm of respectability. Mind you, not all manifestations of the discourse are necessarily antisemitic. However, the extent to which this particular discourse of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel recapitulates or echoes classic antisemitic themes should give us pause. Designing and teaching my new course has provided a welcome opportunity to think through some of these issues. I’ll try just to sketch the rough parameters of the continuum here.

What unites the deniers and others on the fringe with many mainstream critics of Israel is the disturbing and increasing tendency to introduce references to the Holocaust into debate primarily in order to denounce the existence or actions of the state. There are several basic arguments, each of which has “hard” and “soft” variants.

Certainly, no right-thinking person would accept the hate-mailer’s claim that Zionists fabricated the story of the Holocaust in order to obtain their state. However, many otherwise decent and rational people readily assent to one of several arguments to the effect that Israel and its supporters illegitimately or excessively invoke the Holocaust in order to enrich the state, justify its policies, or shield it from criticism. The harder variants see this practice as deliberate or even quasi-conspiratorial in nature, whereas some of the softer ones regard it as an understandable but unacceptable reaction to historical trauma. By often charging that there is an attempt to silence debate, however, both may end up echoing classic antisemitic tropes regarding Jewish “power” and influence over government and media.

Whereas likening Israelis to Nazis was a practice once largely confined to the cruder “anti-Zionist” propaganda of the USSR and its clients, that taboo has vanished in the past two decades (just try googling "Zionazi" for a start). Even many people close to the mainstream no longer scruple at the comparison, which European, British, and US government bodies now include under definitions of potentially antisemitic discourse. Because the analogy can still generate controversy, however, some groups avoid it out of principle or pragmatism. Rather than invoking the Nazis, they speak of “ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid," which deliver almost as much anti-racist moral firepower, but lower risk of provocation and unintended injury to the user. The softest version is the claim that Israelis have failed to learn the “true” lessons of the Holocaust and cannot see that they have increasingly, although perhaps inadvertently, come to resemble their former oppressors. They, “of all people," we are told—apparently with sympathetic regret, but in fact with condescension—"should know better.” This reproach in fact recapitulates the venerable Christian anti-Judaic trope of Jewish "blindness" to the truth of their own history and tradition. As a result, this version is equally popular in the churches and among postmodern types who relish "irony."

Perhaps the newest argument involves a sort of buyer’s remorse that I have referred to as "the new discourse of regret": the idea that the world made a fateful mistake in creating the State of Israel. It is actually the most insidious argument because, even as it uniquely delegitimizes a member state of the United Nations, it appears to be the most humane and non-judgmental: we’re all victims. It begins by acknowledging that the shameful tradition of European antisemitism and world passivity in the face of Nazism led to the tragedy of the Holocaust. When the world then nobly sought to make amends by creating a Jewish state, it in fact acted precipitously and overcompensated for its own guilt, failing to recognize that it was doing an injustice to the Arabs. There’s plenty of victimhood to go around in this model: tragically, the Jews were in fact victimized twice, first by suffering genocide at the hands of the Nazis and then by being given a state that was doubly cursed because it both turned them into oppressors and thereby failed to bring them the promised permanent freedom from violence and hatred. The Palestinians are then the chief—and NB: only entirely blameless—victims, being forced simply to pay the price for the sins of the Europeans. And as for the Europeans and other outsiders, even they are in some sense really just victims of their own excess of empathy and good intentions. Now they can congratulate themselves on having seen the error of their ways, so that they are free both to wallow in their guilt and to revel in their new-found rectitude. It all sounds perfectly plausible and uplifting. I almost shed a tear myself.


None of this is to deny the legitimacy of even harsh criticism directed against Israel. The aforementioned studies on contemporary antisemitism all make that clear.

The point, rather, is that this is all bad history as well as bad politics. It manages to make several terrible mistakes at once.

• It trivializes the Holocaust by focusing exclusively (and superficially, at that) on its presumed consequences in isolation from its course and causes.

• Instrumentalizing the Holocaust in this manner—above and beyond the fact that this is precisely the mistake of which critics accuse Israel—thereby risks losing any real grasp of both the particular and the universal significance of the catastrophe, which must be understood as a properly historical phenomenon in its own right.

• The fact that the Holocaust, of all things, is now used so frequently as a club with which to beat the Jewish state should set off alarm bells. It betokens a casting off of inhibitions and thus erodes the barrier against open antisemitism.

• The association between the Holocaust and the creation of Israel—or better: Palestine Partition, for we should remind ourselves that the actual UN vote foresaw creation of two states, Arab and Jewish—was genuine, but complex: antisemitism, Zionism, Arab nationalism. and the “question of Palestine” all existed well before 1947. To reduce the tragic Arab-Israeli conflict to a botched quick fix of a mess arising from the Holocaust is to distort the past in ways that make solving the problems of the present all the more difficult.

BDS on Campus: A Generation of Giants Unleashes its Frightful Onslaught

Evidently I spoke too soon when I gently suggested that the recent BDS conference at Hampshire this past weekend had been a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

When I unsuspectingly arrived on campus on Monday, I was taken aback to see that these signs had sprouted, like dragon's teeth, overnight:

It was of course with no little trepidation that I therefore made my way from the parking lot to my office in Franklin Patterson Hall, one of the sturdiest buildings on campus, built of brick and concrete. To my relief, the structure was standing, exactly as it had been on Friday afternoon.

That's a true story—and an allegory.

Comparative Quackery: The Joke is on BDS

Sometimes the irony is so delicious that one just has to believe a witty higher power is directing our affairs here on earth. How else to explain the sight that greeted me on Friday afternoon, just as the vaunted national conference of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was getting underway?

Q: What’s the difference between BDS and homeopathy?

A: Not much, actually. Both are frauds that are led by scoundrels, attract the naïve, and have yet to produce any verifiable result, much less, the promised benefit for suffering humanity.

* * *

The bad news:

• It’s embarrassing that my college, which takes justifiable pride in its rigorous and innovative science pedagogy, could open its facilities to a pseudo-scientific movement that has absolutely no clinical validity.

• It’s embarrassing that my college, which purports to "emphasize comparative, historical, and interdisciplinary approaches and encourage critical reflection from multiple perspectives," could host an event whose organizers display such an abysmally oversimplified view of history (compare with this far more nuanced version) and indeed disdain both critical reflection on their own enterprise and the multiple perspectives that others could offer in dialogue.

The good news:

1) The College as an institution does not support either fraud. It rents out its space to outside groups who will pay the fee, and it allows campus organizations to hold their own events.

2) No one takes this stuff seriously anyway.

* * *

Addendum: and just in case that humiliatingly ludicrous SJP statement is ever taken down, I include here a screen shot:

Whither BDS: A generation of giants—or delusions of grandeur?

The great moment has finally arrived. The gestation period is over.

Break out the cigars.

Just over nine months have passed since the BDS movement triumphantly announced its penetration of the power structures of Hampshire College. As we indicated at the outset and others soon realized, this was in fact idle and impotent boasting rather than date rape (though each scenario is unappetizing in its way; that should tell you something).

Still, let’s take them at their word. Assuming we really can accept paternity (a big "if"), just what did these cocky folks produce?

The elder external boosters were once again premature in shooting off the news of the colossal achievement: in this case, the birth of a mighty movement led by “A new generation of giants."

Well, okay, if you say so. But is there some yardstick by which we measure "giant"? Let's take a look at the prodigious progeny.

Much of the conference consisted (aside from a few pep-rally-type events) of, well, reports of various local efforts, without, well, any particular effects. It further consisted in promoting a mixture of Quixotic master goals (make universities and monster academic pension fund CREF divest; this, although the effort failed at Hampshire, which has practically no endowment at stake) and (more sub rosa) small-scale guerilla actions that fall somewhere between the juvenile and the illegal: e.g. “de-shelve” Israeli products ([1] [2]) in stores. Not exactly the stuff of which Che Guevara was made.

On second thought, the miserable little creature—weak, helpless, and crying out incoherently—really does resemble its putative parent.

From premature climax to anticlimax: that pretty much sums it up.

22 November: St. Cecilia's Day

For most of us in America, November 22 is the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and that's it, and that's understandable. It was an overwhelming event. It was one of those proverbial moments at which everyone of a certain age can remember exactly where he or she was when the news arrived. It's true even for those of us who, like me, were only small children at the time.

However, I also have another November 22 memory from my—I was going to say, "mature," but as I have yet to reach that state in either the literal or the figurative sense, let me correct that to—"college" years. My music teacher had put me in touch with some other adult students of his—young professionals, all more than half a generation older than I was—who were interested in forming a string quartet of like-minded but not excessively accomplished amateurs. One of them, a generous businessman, with a spectacular antique violin, an elegant house, and a refined aesthetic sense, decided to revive the Baroque tradition of the Saint Cecilia's Day festival.

Because she was known, thanks to a rather slim strand of legend (but wherein does tradition otherwise consist?) as the patron saint of music, it became the custom in England to celebrate her saint's day—November 22—with concerts and other festivities. The two pieces written for the occasion by Purcell

and that by Händel

are now well known. Our local festivities were restricted to a small circle, but we valued it all the more. Our host provided the food and drink. His only requirement was that all the guests perform a work of music in the manner of their choosing, as best they could—and "leave their diffidence at home." All were welcome, amateur and professional alike, but no one could judge, and no one could apologize. It was a fine model of open-minded and egalitarian interaction, and I often have occasion to remember it in other contexts.

22 November 1963: The Kennedy Assassination

I actually have nothing, new or other, to say about the Kennedy assassination. However, I did want to take opportunity to say something good about History channel for a change. Although I have often been critical of it (in part a matter of disappointed expectations: it could be so much better, along the lines of its European counterparts), I have to say that it has some winners.

Earlier this fall, there was the story of the Kennedy assassination, "JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America," told simply in raw news footage from the time of the murder itself. (I missed Saturday night's program on the first 24 hours after the event and thus cannot offer a judgment on it.) This past week, History also aired the multipart "World War II in HD," the story of the experiences of twelve ordinary Americans in the War, told through diaries and letters, color film footage, and modern interviews. Both made such compelling—even transfixing—viewing because they seemed to offer direct access to human drama.

There's a lesson here: As I've noted before, the worst History channel programs are those in which the content is simply inane and the object is to pander, or there is too clearly a strained attempt to make more serious and legitimate material "interesting" through the use of reenactments and other gimmicks, which are rarely executed well or tastefully. (This latter trend, even in cases that don't lend themselves to costume drama, is both understandable and controversial: [1] [2] [3] [4]; and that's not even taking into account outright fakery and fauxtography). By contrast, the channel does best when it sticks closest to the traditional documentary format. That's not to say that alternatives are not possible, just that the ones they have tried don't work.

Relax, guys. When you're good, you're good. But remember: sometimes, less really is more.

Historic Structures: Another Success for Preserve UMass

At the 29 September meeting of the Amherst Historical Commission, Joe Larson, Recording Secretary of Preserve UMass, gave us a preliminary briefing on the progress of the inventory of historic resources on the UMass campus undertaken as part of the agreement between the Commonwealth and the University after the latter violated environmental protection and historic preservation procedures in its demolition of old buildings.

The Opening of Massachusetts Agricultural College [predecessor of UMass]

painting in the lobby of the Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Preserve UMass has in the meantime issued the following press release

Date: November 8, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Historic Assessment of UMass Amherst Campus Completed

Two years after the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts was placed on the 2007 List of the Ten Most Endangered Historic Resources of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, campus administrators have completed a major step in reversing this designation. An independent professional assessment has been completed of the 112 existing campus buildings built during the period 1728 – 1959, and the University has filed documentation with the Massachusetts Historical Commission on the historic and architectural significance of each building.

As a result of the assessment, 82 UMass buildings will be added to the state’s Inventory of Archaeological and Historic Assets of the Commonwealth, bringing the total University structures so listed to 105. Of these, 54 have been identified as eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, according to the consultants hired by the University: Einhorn Yaffee Prescott of Boston and other locations across the U.S., Vanasse Hangen Brustlin of Watertown, MA, and Pressley Associates of Cambridge, MA.

“We congratulate the University administration for selecting this outstanding team of professionals’ said Professor Emeritus Joseph S. Larson, Corresponding Secretary of the private organization, Preserve UMass, that had pressed for an independent assessment in 2007. “The significance of this assessment is that for the first time the question of the historic and archaeological significance of each of the older buildings has professional standing. This could not have been achieved without the cooperation of the University, the involvement of the over 125 supporters of Preserve UMass, the members of the Town of Amherst Historical Commission, and the staff of the Massachusetts Historical Commission. And we commend the University for retaining the professionals to conduct an assessment of the modern campus buildings, some of which were designed by nationally known architects. Preserve UMass views the combination of historic and modern buildings on the UMass campus as an important living exhibit of American architecture.”

In their report to the University, the consultants recommended establishment of a University of Massachusetts Amherst Historic District, saying that “A number of architects, landscape architects, and planners of local and/or national prominence were involved in the design of the individual buildings and the overall plan of the current University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. The aggregate efforts of these design professionals produced a distinctive public university campus landscape, primarily of the mid-19th to mid-20th century, which is unique in Massachusetts.”

Professor Larson reports that Preserve UMass will continue to be involved in historic preservation on the campus. “Our role will be to work for establishment of the Historic District, nomination of the 54 qualified buildings to the National Register, and full consideration of historic, architectural, and archaeological values in future campus construction.”

Note: A list of the 112 buildings and a map of the historic buildings (pdf files) are available from Preserve UMass on request by email to larson@tei.umass.edu.

We welcome this announcement and hope that the principle of respect for historic structures and cooperation with both the local and state historical commissions will now be firmly enshrined as a principle at all members of the Five College Consortium.

[image added]

Jews Behaving Badly (enough, already)

Like many other people, I followed, with a mixture of serious engagement and detached amusement, the political food fight over the rising Jewish action group J Street, which bills itself as “the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.” Conservatives and many centrists would of course have no truck with the organization from the start. However, some centrists and left-liberals who may initially have been attracted also came to have their doubts, occasioned by a series of actions or statements that seemed to emphasize only criticism of Israel, without support for the idea of a Jewish state or understanding of its security needs. The picture at the time of the conference became, if anything, even more blurred. It was first reported and then denied that the college arm of the movement had decided to drop the designation, “pro-Israel.” In any case, the organization certainly found that many of the attendees did not share the commitment to the first half of that slogan.

The picture was blurred in part also because founder Jeremy Ben Ami likened J Street to Israel’s centrist, big-tent (others would say: characterless and rudderless) Kadima party, a move that angered and puzzled supporters without necessarily winning over skeptics. In an interview, the Atlantic noted, "He declared himself a Zionist; condemned the book "The Israel Lobby"; called America's military aid package to Israel untouchable; and told me he hopes his group angers the non-Zionist left by staking out mainstream Jewish positions on Israel and the peace process -- 'I hope that we have a very strong left flank that attacks us.'" His views, he insisted, were resolutely pro-Israel, which in no way precluded criticism of Israel—in other words, pretty much what J Street always claimed to be. Time will tell which characteristic is the dominant one. New organizations, like adolescents, require time in order to develop distinct and consistent identities. In the meantime, who needs action movies and video games when you can just sit back and watch people slug it out in the blogs?

My point here, however, is not about J Street, and rather, about the way that people talked about it. Internecine Jewish fighting is of course nothing new. There is that old joke told in the days of the British Mandate in Palestine:

Sergeant, reporting to his superior: “We have arrested a dozen Jews! Five Revisionists, four Mizrachis, two Communists, and one General Zionist.”

Officer: “Good work. Where are they?”

Sergeant: “They’re standing outside.”

Officer: “What?! without a guard?!”

Sergeant: “Not necessary. They’re keeping a very sharp eye on one another."

Healthy debate is always a good thing. After all, that’s why J Street’s proponents claim it was founded. Some stupid debate is the normal price of healthy debate, and we all know how to tune out the static. Much of the casual and instinctive (emphasis on the preceding terms) critique of J Street was simply nasty and uninformed and did not attempt to address the issues in a serious way. However, there comes a point at which stupid and nasty cross a line and become unhealthy and vicious. I was therefore revolted (though, as an occasional reader of talkbacks on newspaper sites and blogs, not totally surprised) to see the following image of anti-J Street protesters:


The take of Jewcy (whence this photograph)—“worst swastikas ever”—is probably the best one: you lame-asses, not only are you alone, but you can’t even make a graphically effective poster (I paraphrase).

That response accords with my basic instinct and literary sensibility. Such behavior was the exception, and not the rule; better to slap it down and then move ahead. Still, we ignore or merely mock this sort of nastiness at our peril.

There comes a point at which the infighting and invective cross a line. This is it. The Talmud teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed not because of the Romans, but because of “causeless hatred” among the inhabitants of the land.

The J Street conference took place around the anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. The murder in turn took place at a time when right-wing forces were attacking his peace policies with unprecedented venom. The obscene poster depicting him in Nazi SS uniform came to epitomize the atmosphere commonly said to have made his murder possible. (One may recall that his widow, Leah Rabin, long refused to speak to current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, regarding him as complicit in that sort of vile incitement.)

Have these protesters learned nothing? (for example: a real vocabulary? more sophisticated reasoning? or just plain common sense and decency?). Most of the abuse of the Nazi analogy (periodically documented on this site) comes from antisemites and enemies of Israel. It is repulsive, but it is no longer surprising. But should not at least the Jews show a modicum of common sense and restraint when deploying that most potent of analogies? Do they not worry that they desecrate the memory of their dead? How can you criticize people who use the term, “Zionazis,” when you yourself trivialize history and human suffering? It’s just plain stupid. It's a shame. Literally.