For the Record
by Joshua Malbin on Feb.16, 2012, under Comics
I am not proud of this fact, but I have been successfully cowed into avoiding putting my opinions on Israel into public record as much as possible. I still don’t especially want to, but I feel like I have to say a little something about this Jerusalem Post-originated Reuters op-ed that quotes me. So here are the three things I’m going to say:
1. I do not in any way endorse anything in the op-ed surrounding the single direct quote, which is accurate.
2. While I didn’t care for Sarah Glidden’s book, I believe Steven Stotsky mischaracterizes it when he calls it “propaganda” and implies that it is specifically pro-Palestinian propaganda. Here’s how I described the plot of How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less in my original review of it: “Liberal American Jew with sympathy for Palestinians goes on a Birthright trip to Israel and questions what she thought she knew.” In other words, it’s the story of someone becoming more sympathetic to Israel’s side of the argument, the farthest thing from anti-Israel propaganda I can imagine.
3. They might have thrown me a link.
Also for the record, no I do not have a Google alert for my name. Somebody forwarded the Post article to my sister.
CORRECTION: I misunderstood the “REUTERS” attribution of the photo in the article. Fixt.
February 16th, 2012 on 2:30 pm
Comment-baiter.
February 16th, 2012 on 2:31 pm
Srsly? I wasn’t trying to.
February 16th, 2012 on 6:34 pm
Mr. Malbin,
I used your quote because you expressed yourself well and made the point I wanted to make. That point is that her work is an example of trite, unscholarly material that does not warrant a seminar at Harvard for teachers who are sent to these seminars by taxpayers so that they can learn essential information to teach students about the Middle East. Ms. Glidden’s book may be fine for pleasure reading, but a cartoon book covering a two week trip to Israel does not make her an expert or scholar on anything. You made that point. I agree.
I also did not call it “propaganda” as you claimed, read my piece again. Here is the portion:
“The center even plans to devote a day-long seminar to a cartoon book produced by a young activist named Sarah Glidden, whose insight into Israel consists of a two-week tour with the Birthright program.
As blogger Joshua Malbin noted, “If the most memorable experience of your life is a package tour taken by literally 200,000 other people to date, you don’t get to write a memoir.”
February 16th, 2012 on 6:46 pm
I can see why you might have interpreted the whole paragraph as calling her work propaganda. It would have been clearer if there had been a paragraph break before the last sentence. The word “propaganda” in the last sentence refers to the entire body of work promoted by the center, such as Occupation 101 and other works I mentioned, which are propaganda. It was not intended as a specific reference to her work.
Regarding the link, I would have included one, but I don’t decide that. That is editorial disgression.
February 16th, 2012 on 11:17 pm
I was kidding about the link. No worries.