John Fund Libel of Juan Cole Still Not Retracted
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal attacked me in a column on Monday in which he alleged that I had called Israel the "most dangerous regime in the Middle East."
This quote is a sheer fabrication. Mr. Fund put it forward as a reason for which I should not have a professorship. Yet I never said it. He knows that I never said it. He has still not retracted it or apologized for this and other falsehoods he spewed about me in his column.
What kind of journalist just makes falsehoods up and puts them in someone's mouth? What kind of newspaper allows that? And in order to damage someone's career? Isn't that a tort?
By the way, has John Fund ever apologized for his repeated assertions in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" and that therefore the United States needed to go to war and get thousands of its young men and women blown up? What else has he gotten wrong? With this kind of track record of grievous error, why does he deserve a privileged perch as an influential talking head?
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/25/2006 06:03:00 AM
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10 Comments:
I have learned so much from your blog over some time now and is most disheartened to see these bigots smear you for your hard work. Thought it was time I show some support. Fans of your blog, which brings a new dimension of understanding to America, will always far outnumber these people who have the narrowest view of life.
-- Monwar Hussain
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Professor,
You're in the posiiton of eithe rpreaching to the choir, or shouting at the universe.
i'd be surprised if there is anyone reading your site who is on the fence about you. Either they support you and your thoughts in general, like me, or they think you are the worst America has to offer. Don't waste any more of your time or energy railing against Fund, or the NY Sun piece he took his allegations from.
While I am sure you are already aware, I also tried to find the original quote that the smear campaign was harping on.
Of course, as you point out, it doesn;t exist.
Some digging and luck led me to a hyperbolic anti-Cole site which at least had the deceny to print what you actually said.
In the blog, on Mar 23, 2004 (where has the outcry been until now, right?)
you said
"The most dangerous regime to United States interests in the Middle East is that of Ariel Sharon, not because he fights terrorists, but because he is stealing the land of another people and is brutalizing them in the process--and those are people with whom the rest of the Middle East and the Muslim world sympathizes"
Now, this is a very specific and targeted statement. I remember readng this post, and I agreed with it and its accuracy. Your detractors are selectively quoting to an extreme that borders on fabrication, and for one of them to accuse you of "Clintonian parsing" is ludicrous, if not the pot calling the kettle black.
Keep up the good work.
AH
Eliminating four words in the middle of a quotation without using an ellipsis is not very cool. I'd hope the WSJ's standards would demand a correction for that. I'm assuming that the remark the quotation was originally based on was the lead sentence of the final graf in this story: http://www.juancole.com/2004/03/sharons-murder-of-yassin-endangers.html
Here's that whole graf:
"The most dangerous regime to United States interests in the Middle East is that of Ariel Sharon, not because he fights terrorists, but because he is stealing the land of another people and is brutalizing them in the process--and those are people with whom the rest of the Middle East and the Muslim world sympathizes. A US counter-insurgency fight against Muslim radical extremists requires winning hearts and minds, which is impossible as long as Sharon behaves the way he did Monday, since everyone in the region knows that the US coddles the Israeli Right. Israel once had a proper prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who knew how to make peace and how to be a good partner for America. Sharon is not good enough to shine his shoes."
With this kind of track record of grievous error, why does he deserve a privileged perch as an influential talking head?
The 'talking head' position has no actual requirement that the privileged one be intelligent, accurate, honest, investigative or posses the basic qualities of human decency. John Fund is a prime example, but the list seems endless.
The only safe academic is one who limits his or her work to arcane, remote topics whose human subjects are all dead or who share most of the underlying ideas. Otherwise, the mantle of protection proves rather thin. Public statements have to be constrained to the sort one makes at a relative's 50th wedding anniversary. Any venture into the full realm of free speech requires a willingness to fight all the consequences: name-calling, challenges on "fact," conflation of evidence, and guilt by association.
Finer certainly got all his copy from material written by stringers of Pipe's MEF Campus Watch. M. Rubin, A. Joffe, E. Karsh, M. Kramer, have all posted materials which paraphrase your blog. Some are regurgitated in a NY Sun article by E. Johnson and M. Webber. Were you ever to be "interviewed" (aka deposed) on Fox, O'Reilly or Hannity would get their talking points from the same sources.
Remember the Puzo story where one mobster confides to another about the revulsion felt each time a colleague died in a "hit"? The answer: "But this is the business we have chosen." Scholars use pens (or keyboards) instead of guns, but the results can be just as queasy.
Better to stick to your "guns" than to look for an attorney. The first step would be to clarify your intent in a IC posting dated 3/23/2004:
http://www.juancole.com/2004/03/sharons-murder-of-yassin-endangers.html
This is the source of the "most dangerous regime" allegation. In fact, your remarks are not any more anti-Israel than those made by various Israelis, but better to defend and clarify.
The other answer would be to pursue the "quietist" approach. In fact, there might be no harm in an IC blog that gave more attention to reviews and comments on scholarly books and artcles.
The only unfair thing about this is that it mean you adher to a standard that Pipes and Rubin certainly don't obey themselves.
Yale cannot be accused of falling into the thrall of antisemites. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Its own Press is publishing Islamic Imperialism by Karsh, who denies any Arabs were expulsed in 1948. Of course, the fact that Karsh has very firm ideas about contemporary politics should not be held against him. However, any works he issued through serious publishers should certainly be subject to exacting reviews by other experts.
If MEF and CW folks indeed favor academic balance, I'd be very curious to see how their idea of a "model syllabus" on a course on Modern Middle East History would differ from any proposed by their MESA "adversaries." I imagine that both sides would concur on the inclusion of certain documents that have to be read and debated. I would be curious to know what attention their class lectures give to sentence two, clause three of the Balfour Declaration. Somehow the clause gets striken from the primary narrative of some famous histories of the region. I loved the late Abba Ebban's splendid TV series, but could never get over this gap in the story. He too, like his slouch nemesis Arafat, "missed an opportunity."
Dear Dr.Cole:
Mr. Fund goes on to attempt to link me in some way with the Taliban. I am mystified by that particular smear. What similarity, exactly, does he see between an American member of the Democratic Party who voted for Clinton, Gore and Kerry, and the devotees of Mullah Omar?
Here is an example of how neoconservative PR usually operates, nothing new about this. In fact, they have no problems at all with portraying Sharon himself as an enemy of Israel - and it is perfectly OK from their prospective.
Also, for all that I know about WSJ, they usually don't do National Enquirer type of things like celebrity X is pregnant while she is not.
Typically - like with IWMD - it takes a war to prove them literally wrong, and even then they won't admit this.
One known exception is Galloway, but that's UK and he is a professional political fighter, not an academic. Even in this case, I am sure they will invent something else.
With this in mind, I am not particularly surprised that they fished out one of your statements and slightly transformed it into simple "Israel is dangerous". This is exactly what PR machine is supposed to do.
So, I wish you best of luck in your great work! Let us hope for the best.
So one of the most influential newspapers of the US has an op-ed about a blogger. This is great. Congratulations Juan Cole. It shows that although the bad guys seem too much powerful, their power stems mostly from disinformation and they are afraid of the truth and informed comments becoming more available to the general public. It means that every one of us can make a real difference just by talking and writing persistently about these issues.
Oh by the way:
But Michael Oren, a visiting fellow at Yale, notes that in February 2003 Mr. Cole wrote on his blog that "Apparently [President Bush] has fallen for a line from the neo-cons in his administration that they can deliver the Jewish vote to him in 2004 if only he kisses Sharon's ass." Mr. Oren says "clearly that's anti-Semitism; that's not a criticism of Israeli policy." (Exit polls showed that 74% of the Jewish vote went to John Kerry.)
It seems like this label anything that you don't like as "anti-Semitism" cover-up is becoming weaker and weaker every day. If this is the best sentence they can label as anti-Semitist from Informed Comment, it actually shows how not anti-Semitist IC is.
Thanks for all the great work, Dr. Cole! I just wanted to share with you below the letter I sent to Mr. Fund in response to his vile smear.
Kind Regards,
John Barry
Orlando, Florida
Mr. Fund,
It appears that “Taliban Man” Mr. Hashemi will soon be experiencing yet another unexpected career change. Your article inspired me to make a vocational suggestion to Mr. Hashemi. Recall that in addition to Mr. Hashemi’s communication skills, he is also an inflexible fundamentalist, a reactionary zealot, and a self-righteous fanatic. With these credentials, wouldn’t “Taliban Man” be a perfect match with you and the other extremists writing for the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page?
I recognize some differences between your neo-conservative perspective and Mr. Hashemi’s brand of political Islam, but just look at the similarities. Both perspectives ignore such trifles as international law and human rights, and both perspectives enthusiastically endorse wanton political violence. They are, in the end, two forms of extremism – one avowedly religious and the other allegedly secular – that exhort their followers to take up arms against all infidels.
In the neo-conservative canon, Professor Cole is an infidel for effectively pointing out the disastrous consequences of the Middle East policies advocated by you and your colleagues. I understand how bothersome it must be for you to read Professor Cole’s expert writing on the unfolding debacle in Iraq, especially since you were cheerleading the invasion and occupation. In the end, your smear on the intrepid Professor Cole is just another example of the crusade launched against those who dare to speak out on the Iraq quagmire and Israel’s unjust treatment of the Palestinians. Thankfully, people like Professor Cole are doing everything possible to illuminate our understanding of these and other vital matters. Your vilification of Professor Cole is not only disgraceful and appalling, but it deliberately distracts from the need to have a national discussion of these issues.
But I digress. To return to our mutual concerns over the “Taliban Man,” it turns out that the proper comparison was not between Professor Cole and Mr. Hashemi, but rather between Mr. Hashemi and you. Mr. Hashemi may indeed make a welcome addition to the Wall Street editorial page. I would, however, caution Mr. Hashemi that if he were to become one of your co-editorialists, he should have a contingency plan ready. After all, with the deepening Iraq quagmire and Bush’s free-fall, neo-conservative fowl such as yourself may soon be evicted from your roosts.
Please find below a copy of my 'reader response' sent to the WSJ.
Mr. Fund's opinion piece on Dr. Cole is regrettable. Americans are tiring of ad hominem attacks, mischaracterizations and misquotations that cloud and damage rational discourse and debate. Dr. Cole has written little that Israelis themselves critical of their current government have not already expressed. But by virtue of his dissent with Mr. Fund's opinions, he is mischaracterized as out of touch (referring to past work on 19th Century history, never mind his research into modern issues); no longer an academic (merely b/c he blogs); 'hotheaded' (quite the opposite, if one has met him); 'intolerant' (criticism is not intolerance); 'polemical' & an advocate of ‘dubious conspiracy theories’; ad nauseum.
Nowhere does Mr. Fund actually argue against any of the points that Prof. Cole has made (or those which Mr. Fund has misquoted). We, as readers, are to accept Mr. Fund's view as gospel and are then left to infer that Prof. Cole is somehow unhinged to think otherwise. Classic ad hominem attack.
Furthermore, when universities are badgered to only hire those who advance a prescribed point-of-view, then everyone suffers. Knowledge and understanding are born in a crucible, not in a straight-jacket.
(Keep up the good work, Dr. Cole. Many thanks) MV
Juan Cole is experiencing some heavy artillery from the Untruthers. That being John Fund the Lackey of the powerful Wall Street Journal, the voice of the Worldly. Fund's false accusations are par for the course and to be expected. Cole struck a deep nerve and the powerful of this world are true to form, going for the jugular. I suggest to Cole that this very same tactic was applied to a Guy 2000 years ago and can be very effective assuming one does not accept the backing of One bigger than this world. Hey, this pressure that Cole is getting is strong and real and I enourage him to stand by a faith in a higher being if he has not allready done so. Meanwhile I stand close to him and tell everyone who will listen of Cole's stressful endeavors for Truth.
John Anderson
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