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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (98545)	5/19/2003 2:51:50 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

In a perfect world, Lewis would be able to review his student's review .... Is Beeman saying that all of a sudden Lewis doesn't know what he is talking about because he is ....oh, shudder...."older".... (if that were the case, we'd certainly have to let folks in the Senate like Byrd go....) Or have the times changed? Did Lewis actually change his mind from years of work, OR did Beeman just think Lewis did....? Or has something happened to change Beeman's mind and veer to the left? Bernard Lewis was one of my gurus as a graduate student. As one of the editors of the venerable Cambridge History of Islam, the classic books, The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey and dozens of other essential works, he was an icon as a Middle Eastern historian. He held sway for many years at Princeton as the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies. Contemporary times and retirement have changed him. The sober, even-handed professor of my youth has been transformed in his recent work to a neoconservative toady, almost eager to corrupt his own considerable knowledge for ideological purposes. In this, and his earlier book, What went wrong? : Western Iimpact and Middle Eastern Response he now spouts invective and misinformation about the Islamic world that is pleasing to his new best friends—Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle—but which will be deeply misleading to a public desperate for accurate information about Islamic civilization and history.

To: JohnM who wrote (98545)	5/19/2003 5:12:35 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

[Bernard Lewis] The sober, even-handed professor of my youth has been transformed in his recent work to a neoconservative toady, almost eager to corrupt his own considerable knowledge for ideological purposes. Thanks, John. I looked at Beeman's Bio and figured him for a Said Follower, a left wing radical. Then you prove it for me! Is their anybody left in our ME departments that is not an Arabist?

To: JohnM who wrote (98545)	5/20/2003 1:07:47 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Finally, Lewis manages the most despicable calumny of all: the equation of the Arab world with the Nazi movement. He begins his extended discussion of this topic thus: “The Nazi version of German ideologies was influential in nationalist circles, notably among the founders and followers of the Ba’th Party in Syria and Iraq.” With this characterization in hand, what better reason could there be for the United States to invade this “axis of evil?” Since when is the truth a calumny? The Nazis wooed the Arab world from the 30's on, and quite successfully, for obvious reasons - my enemy's enemy and all that. Nasser and Sadat were Nazis - members of the Egyptian branch of the Nazi Party. The Mufti was an ardent Nazi who spent WWII in Berlin after trying and failing to manage a Nazi-inspired coup in Iraq. It was Nazi influence that promoted the farhoud against the Jews in 1941, well before you can blame it on the evil Zionists. During this period, the Nazi stereotypes of Jews - members of a diabolical cabal out to rule the world - replaced the traditional Arab stereotypes of Jews as despicable and clownish. The Arab world has repeated Nazi propaganda from that day to this, such as the forged remarks supposedly by Benjamin Franklin on the Jews that were printed in a Saudi paper last year, if I remember correctly. This guy seems to be coming from your school of "ooh! it's beyond the pale to call anyone a Nazi" - even if they regularly goose-stepped and cried 'Heil Hitler'