Objecting to the truth

Eve Garrard, writing in normblog, objects to two statements regarding Jews and Israel.

The first is attributed to Richard Dawkins: “[the Jewish lobby] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see.” (from an article in the Guardian. Incidently it’s unclear whether Dawkins actually said those words; in any case he is reported to have said them).

The second is from an unnamed person on a mailing list, which Garrard quotes as:

Issues of Palestine are now determining tenure issues in the States. Can we expect the Zionist lobby to go the same way here[?]… Bread and butter issues cannot be neatly compartmentalised so that we have separate arrangements for what is “safe” (and does not threaten Zionism) and “not safe” (in what actively opposes Zionism).

Garrard sees two problems with both statements. Firstly that they are evidence of anti-Jewish prejudice¹, and secondly that few people protest against these statements (and statements like them).

When I read these statements I start by asking myself: are they true? And it seems to me that both contain a fair degree of truth. The USA does have a very pro-Israel foreign policy; for example Israel is the USA’s largest recipient of foreign aid, even though it is a comparatively wealthy country. Many people do believe that the Israel lobby has a large influence over USA foreign policy in the Middle East. The Israel/Palestine conflict does affect whether someone gets tenure in American universities, as is demonstrated by the recent examples of Nadia Abu El-Haj and Norman Finkelstein.

Perhaps the reason for a lack of protest against these words is that they are largely truthful, and stating the truth ought to be — even if it is not — in Garrard’s words “normalized, unexceptionable, unworthy of remark”. Some people are opposed to the actions of the Israeli state and the Israel lobby, and these are perfectly normal and ethically respectable political positions to take. The majority of these people are not motivated by bigotry against Jews, though obviously some are, and it is wrong to suggest that someone is motivated by bigotry unless one has evidence that that person is.

Note:

1. Garrard uses the phrase “anti-Semitism” which properly analysed ought to refer to people who hate Semites; but the majority of people who speak Semitic languages aren’t Jews, and there are many Jews who don’t speak any Semitic languages. I find this term an imprecise and inaccurate way of refering to anti-Jewish bigotry, so I don’t use it. If you want to understand issues, you need to think clearly, and you should therefore aim to speak clearly and precisely too.

Religion and academia

From David Bernstein:

Outrageous, If True: According to the Columbia Spectator, Barnard religion professor Alan Segal was asked by the university to provide a list of archeology experts to comment on the controversial tenure case of Nadia Abu El-Haj’s tenure–archeologists who “preferably” were not Jewish. Segal quite properly refused, noting that religion “has nothing to do with what you say as a professional.”

El-Haj’s “scholarly” work is premised on the idea that Jewish Israeli archeologists invented evidence of ancient Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel to justify Zionist claims to the land. Besides the issue of discrimination, which would be unthinkable in any other context related to any other group, the request to Segal seems like an implicit endorsement of her thesis, that Jewish archeologists cannot be trusted to be objective in their work related to Israel (which makes one wonder why the university would trust El-Haj, of Palestinian Arab origin, to be objective).

James Miller replies thus:

If I were Nadia Abu El-Haj I would prefer, all else being equal, that Jewish people not be among those evaluating my scholarship for tenure. So as not to be accused of anti-Semitism let me say that my mother and wife (although not my father or myself) are Jewish. But based on my experience, Jewish people on average have a far more positive view towards Israel than non-Jewish people do. El-Haj’s scholarship directly attacks Israel and so on average I would suspect that her scholarship would get a more favorable review from non-Jewish than Jewish archeologists.

In a world without bias the religion of El-Haj’s reviewers wouldn’t matter. But we don’t live in such a world. Given that this bias exists, it is rational to try to minimize the harm it might cause El-Haj.

Imagine that El-Haj’s research consisted of archeological evidence that she tried to use to disprove the historical accuracy of parts of the Koran. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to try to avoid Islamic reviewers for her tenure case?

Religious beliefs often cause people to be bias towards those who attack such beliefs. To deny this, or to assume that college professors are too professional to allow such bias to influence them, is silly.

Religious people are often biased towards their religion — almost always so. Academic scholarship, such as archeology, is (or should be) about analysing and collating facts about something and then dispassionately drawing conclusions from these facts.

Religion doesn’t work like that: people have religious beliefs either because they were brought up with them, or they converted to a religion. The first reason is an absurd reason to believe anything; if someone said that they believed that the number of prime numbers was finite, and they believed it because their father and his forefathers had believed that, we’d laugh at them. And the second reason is little better: to believe in something because you want it to be true, i.e. because it gives you some emotional satisfaction, is ludicrous; if an archeologist said they believed they’d found the tomb of King Arthur, on the grounds that they have an emotional attachment to Arthurian legend, people would be incredulous.

So religion can best be thought of as a form of diseased thinking, and religious ways of thinking are thus at odds with what academic ways of thinking ought to be. It may be that a religious person is capable of thinking rationally on subjects outside their religion, but on subjects close to their religion, they probably won’t be.

As well as religious bias, someone might have nationalistic bias towards their country. (Nationalistic bias is similar to religious bias, but differs in one respect: countries exist, and God does not. Religious people are in the business of building intellectual superstructures around an entity that doesn’t exist.)

There are many parts of the world where history is a matter of current political controversy — Israel is one of those places — and as James Miller says it’s silly to expect people with religious or nationalist sentiments to be unbiased when evaluating data relating to such history.

It’s all about sticks and carrots

The UK government wants Israel to oppress the Palestinians less:

Israel must do more for peace process, urges envoy

The man appointed by Gordon Brown to be the UK’s Middle East envoy has warned that Israel must do more to improve the lives of the Palestinian people, or else attempts to revive the peace process could fail.

It’s all very well Britain saying foreign governments should do this or do that, but without an adequate repertoire of sticks and carrots on offer, anything Britain has to say is likely to be ignored by the outside world, who after all are not hanging on Gordon Brown’s evey word (and why should they?)