Israelpolitik:

Regimes of Truth and the Clash of Definitions in the “Promised Land”

“Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici”

“By the power of truth I, while living, have conquered the world”

Brent Cooper (brentcoop1@gmail.com)

University of British Columbia

January 28th 2009

 For better or worse, “truth” and power have always had a paradoxically insidious

and complimentary relationship with each other and to war and society. Often power

masquerades as truth, resulting in atrocities like the Nazi holocaust, but sometimes truth

can undermine power, like with the American civil rights movement or Ghandi’s non-

violent resistance to the British. Unfortunately, either way the process is usually bloody.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is a potential watershed for the struggle between truth and

power. Not to be crass, but due to the complexity of the issue disinterested observers

might appropriately label both the conflict and its commentary a “clusterfuck.”1 In such a

contentious and hostile environment how do we filter the fact from the fodder? In this

paper I will show that there are competing regimes of truth within the secular Western

world. Although framing the issue as such may be viewed as artificial, in light of a

multiplicity of discourses, for my purposes I would like to isolate the two strongest

currents, between cosmopolitan and egalitarian thinking intellectuals and latent

hegemonic power interests (namely of the United States and Israel). I will argue that the

latter dominates the discourse on the question of Palestinian statehood, through the

perception and exaggeration of a “clash of civilizations,” in order to maintain and expand

its geopolitical foothold in Near East. I will then attempt to offer some strategies and

appeals to pragmatism that help expedite the peace process.

The title of this essay is a play on the term realpolitik which means “operating

according to the belief that politics is based on the pursuit, possession, and application of

power.”2 The term can also imply that techniques may be amoral or coercive. This

concept has unique connotations in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict due to the

multitude of interests involved and the conflicting interpretations of facts. Among many
factors of the origin, the modern conflict stems primarily from a long history of territorial

dispute, chiefly aggravated in the June 1967 war in which Israel came to occupy the

Palestinian territories.3 Thus, it is especially relevant to consider the notion of realpolitik

when deconstructing the academic discourse on the subject. The first section of this essay

will deal with the regimes of truth and power; the second will address its relation to the

Israel-Palestine war; the third will look at the implications for society.

Regimes of Truth

A regime of truth as defined by Foucault is the types of discourses and

mechanisms that society accepts to ascertain truth and falsity; the means by which each is

sanctioned; the hierarchy of value given to the techniques of truth acquisition and; the

status of the authorities on truth.4 The prevailing regime includes media, academic, and

political institutions that shape the discourse we look to for truth. Although imagery and

propaganda, as well as rhetoric, play a large role in determining public truth, academics

depend heavily on language to describe reality and our ‘truth.’ Eminent scholar Edward

Said wrote that the dialectic between East and West about Islam amounts to “word

politics” in which each side “sets up situations, justifies actions, forecloses options, and

presses alternatives.”5 According to Foucault, it was not until the Enlightenment period

that people came to realize that language itself does not reflect reality, but rather is a

“transparent film, disassociated from it.”6 Nevertheless, knowledge is not about facts but

about the result of a power struggle.7 Through this process new regimes of truth are

created and they dominate until they are overtaken by a new and presumably truer

regime.8
 At this point, it is useful to address the basic unit of our subject: a human being.

J.R. Lucas’ observations about human nature are particularly cogent and non-

controversial. These observations are; 1) [for coexistence] some interaction and; 2) some

shared-value is necessary; and that 3) we have selfish tendencies; 4) we are fallible and;

5) we have imperfect information.9 As obvious as this may sound, there is no shortage of

individuals who believe they are not only infallible, but also wield the absolute truth.

Although scholars are held to a higher standard of objectivity, they are also not immune

from these flaws. As we will see, the dominant regime of truth is typically preoccupied

with maintaining the status-quo at the expense of truth, and is averse to criticism.

Foucault notes that there is a battle for truth, not an abstract objective truth, but

rather the status of truth. It is a battle for the regimes we use to separate true and false and

the influence of power that is inseparable from the true.10 Truth and power induce and

sustain each other, respectively, in a circular relationship constituting a ‘regime’ of

truth.11 The key insight, according to Foucault, is not that we should try to “emancipate

truth” but rather to detach truth from the social, economic, and cultural forms of

hegemony within which truth applies its power.12 Edward Said speculated that perhaps

absolute truth or perfect knowledge exists in the abstract “but in present reality truth

about such matters as “Islam” [sic] is relative to who produces it.”13 The image of Islam

in the Western mainstream media is often equated with extremism. In the context of the

Israel-Palestine conflict the United States, Israel, and Christianity for that matter, are all

equally guilty of manufacturing a particular ‘truth.’

Jonathan B. Isacoff, a pragmatist who deconstructs the discourse around the Arab-

Israeli conflict, writes that such an approach seeks to “reveal that [historical]
knowledge… is filtered through human cognitive capacities, perceptions, and

imagination.”14 This approach needs to be recognized in order to improve the quality of

the truth produced. For example, we must be careful to not make historical assertions

based on principles that have been falsified, such as the notion of “a people” that actually

exists outside its social construction. Isacoff writes that this notion is integrated into the

history of modern Israel to grant the state and its “people” exceptional status.15 To

bequest people such an extreme conception of “peoplehood” clearly exacerbates racism,

and in a sense is racist, because it is elitist and exclusionary. Surprisingly, this

“teleological exceptionalism” is even supported by some cosmopolitan Israeli elites.16

Indeed this exceptionalism is part of a religious and cultural belief (granted all cultures

have similar myths), but this is dangerous to the postmodernist regime of truth which

strives to deconstruct such ‘truths’ into their component lies.

Isacoff advises that we should execute historical research with equal attention to

both the examination of events and critical introspection of oneself.17 This would include

challenging ones own belief system and bias, as well as our personal motives and

objectives. As this advice is scarcely followed to any serious depth, it is a characteristic

flaw of social scientific research. He argues that all humanities scholarship is biased in

one of two distinct ways: negatively biased scholarship versus “pragmatically.”18 The

former excludes historical evidence that challenge the theoretical bias of the political

scientist. The work produced tends to be “highly stylized renderings” and does not

address the multiple variants of the historical narrative in question. 19 Edward Said points

out that the rhetoric of the dominant experts and scholars of Islam is pervaded by

imperialist biases and simplistic clichés.20

 Pragmatically biased scholarship, on the other hand, is just that; it recognizes the

orientation of the problem as well as the normative implications thereof, and then

proceeds to deconstruct the historical narrative.21 The key is that pragmatists are more

aware and honest about their own biases – and this makes for a more objective pursuit.

Isacoff and Foucault alike advocate that the scholarly approach should be proceeded by

critical questions along the lines of: what is the bias of the narrative?; what is my own

bias?;22 and what is the relationship between truth, power, and the self?23 In addressing

these questions, one is forced to resign to the inherent subjectivity and pliability of

definitions.

Clash of Definitions

According to Noam Chomsky in Understanding Power, the Israel-Palestine

conflict would have been solved long ago if not for the United States.24 He says there is

an international consensus on how to do so – reflected in the numerous U.N. resolutions

repeatedly vetoed by the United States with the support of Israel and a few South Pacific

island states.25 The beginnings of global consensus can be seen after the war in 1967 in

the unanimous U.N. Security Council Resolution 242,26 of which the recommendations

have never been actualized. The U.S. does not care about Israel, Chomsky continues, they

care about control of the Middle East’s oil resources.27 Israel acted as a “mercenary” for

the U.S.; intervening in African affairs in the 60s, and training and arming Third World

dictators in the 70s and 80s. 28 Critics in Chomsky’s camp call Israel a rogue state.29 The

key point is that this makes Israel pliable to U.S. commands because Israel would perish

without their support. 30 The last point is the crux of the argument: the United States must

support Israel unequivocally. We have pinpointed the lever of power in the regime of
truth regarding Israel-Palestine but we still have to determine why the U.S. believes it is

so critical that they defend their ‘truth,’ and Israel, through the application of power.

Although not explicitly, scholar Norman Finkelstein delineates between what I

would like to describe as regimes of truth in competition. In Beyond Chutzpah: On the

Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, he writes that we must distinguish

between the Nazi holocaust and The Holocaust, as well as anti-Semitism and “anti-

Semitism” (or “new anti-Semitism”). The former of each being in reference to the

legitimate grievances about prejudice towards Jews, and the latter terms referring to

usage as an “ideological weapon” to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel and for defending

ideas like the “war on terror,” that cloak a subversive agenda.31 An unbiased political

discourse would recognize that in Europe Muslims are far more stigmatized and

persecuted than Jews and this would warrant greater attention if it were merely about the

suppression of criticism.32 Thus, it is not the narratives of Israel and Palestine that are

competing so much as it is the discourse of truth conducted by the powerful state interests

versus the pragmatic arrival at truth by disinterested scholars and the public. These are

examples of the gross manipulation of language through a regime of truth to support a

policy of “Israelpolitik.”

The two truth regimes can be further illustrated by two popular schools of

thought: Orientalism and the Clash of Civilizations. The premise of Edward Said’s

legacy, Orientalism, is that scholars characterize and generalize the East as “outmoded”33

and “immature.”34 These views come from the context in which the cultures are studied

as well as our own arrogance towards others. He notes that the circumstances in which

Europe has historically been exposed to the Islamic culture have usually been in
pursuance of economic or military goals.35 Said decries that all too often Western

scholars have been in non-Western countries as a result of a “complicity between

imperialism and ethnology.” 36 This complicity must be acknowledged, for moral as well

as intellectual reasons.37 Again we see how power interests compromise the integrity of

truth. Said laments that Islam has come to be perceived as “medieval and dangerous.”38

What is ironic is not that we stereotype the “immature” or “medieval” aspects of an alien

culture, but that most people of our own society fail to draw parallels between the

backwards features of Christianity with that of Islam, which add to the perception of the

West as a threat. These orientalist perceptions are made orthodox knowledge in our

society by the dominant regime in the interests of power. 39

In the second school of thought, political scientist Samuel Huntington argues in

Clash of Civilizations that in this new phase of global relations the primary source of

conflict is culture.40 He predicts that conflicts will mainly occur along the “fault lines” of

these civilizations. An ironic term, because it suggests that only one side may be guilty of

inciting the conflict, but an appropriate analogy to the subterranean – subtextual in our

case – violence of plate tectonics nonetheless. In effect, such a line does run between the

state of Israel and the Arab world and continues up through the Balkan states. Said rejects

the regime of truth Huntington uses as it revitalizes Orientalist thought that is inimical to

the postmodernist school. True as his critique may be, it is also true that the extremists

who perpetuate this cycle of violence believe in the clash of civilizations. If has become a

self-fulfilling prophecy in the post-9/11 world. A special report commissioned by the

United Nations (2006) stated that the Israel-Palestine conflict “is a major factor in the
widening rift between Muslim and Western societies.”41 However, they view it to be

symbolic as it stretches across culture, politics, faith, and geography. 42

What is valuable from fusing the insights of both scholars is that the

fundamentalism that exists in all civilizations antagonizes the others and must be

vanquished by a postmodernist regime of truth. Edward Said advocates a category of

knowledge he calls “antithetical knowledge” which challenges the status-quo and

includes discussion of political influence on scholarship.43 Knowledge is dynamic and

contested, far from a mere regurgitation of facts and “accepted” views.44 Moreover, the

propagation of fear of disorder promotes conformity of views and by extension, distrust

of the “outside” world.45

Within each civilization there is a particular regime of truth that defines the

essence of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and this requires distortion of our common humanity.46

Specifically an “official culture, a culture of priests, academics, and the state” defines the

notions of patriotism and nationalism for its people.47 This official “mouthpiece” speaks

for the whole and so the first order of business is to recognize that this is as true for us as

it is for them.48 Therefore, given that the terms of our own civilization are contested Said

thinks that we are in the “clash of definitions,” not the clash of civilizations.49 We are in a

‘war of ideas’ whereby the strongest ideas do not always win out due to their

indebtedness to power. In other words, if truth can only be acquired by some form of

power, then that power needs to be maintained, sometimes at the expense of truth.

The U.N. applies a double standard to Israel. In 2002 a Cambridge study showed

that compared to analogous global conflicts, the Israel-Palestine has enjoyed “virtual

immunity” from typical U.N. sanctions.50 Why? To describe the machinery of truth
production regarding Israel/Palestine we must look at a particular power factor that is

described as the Israel lobby. Distinguished international relations theorists John

Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt articulate the perverse relationship between the Israel

lobby and U.S. foreign policy. The United States allocates 1/5th of its foreign-aid budget

to Israel, a state that by standards of relative GDP needs no such charity.51 The U.S. gives

generous military and intelligence support to Israel as well as covers up their nuclear

capabilities.52 American support of Israel is so unequivocal that it raises questions about

the motives of the United States. Mearsheimer and Walt doubt Israel’s value as a

strategic asset, 53 and thus undermine the stated foreign policy rationale. Post 9/11, the

U.S.-Israeli alliance is rationalized in a new framework54 – namely the “War on Terror” –

that further orientalizes middle-eastern nations, making them a threat to the U.S. via

Israel. The authors argue however that Israel is a liability because the terrorists

threatening Israel are not the same as those that threaten the United States.55 Moreover,

rather than the U.S. allying with Israel because of common threats, they attract more

hostility and thus terrorism in part because of their ties to Israel.56

The unqualified U.S. diplomatic and military support for Israel reveals the

machinations of the regime of truth in that the hubris of both the U.S. and Israel blinds

them to the legitimate criticisms of their policies and actions. The current transnational

regime holds a monopoly on truth in order to protect and increase its power. Examples of

the “new anti-Semitism” are plentiful. Not even the president of the World Jewish

Congress, Edgar Bronfman, Sr., could comment on the West Bank security barrier

without being deemed traitorous.57 Case in point, ‘the lobby’ is so quick to vilify potential

critics that it did not hesitate to demonize Israel hawk Howard Dean over a comment
calling for U.S. ‘even-handedness’ on the Arab-Israeli conflict. 58 Other high profile

targets include 1980 gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson59 and more recently, Jewish

billionaire George Soros.60

The complicity that is required for this rift between this regime of truth and its

critics is vast. One could draw a parallel – if only in the relationship of power and truth

production - to the symbiotic relationship between the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for

Anthropology (that “scientifically” justified the holocaust) and the Nazi regime. The

former depended on the latter for funding, so was impelled to produce what the Nazis

wanted to hear. The fact that many powerful think tanks in D.C. are also pro-Israel by

default61 and the claim of Harvard Law chair and Israel champion Alan Dershowitz that

Harvard is virtually supported by Jews62 is at least sufficient to drive home the point that,

as Said put it, “scholarly self-congratulation fortifies present practices indefinitely.”63 In

defense of the indefensible Nazi scientists, they were under a deadly oppressive regime of

truth. Options were very limited. What is our excuse? Said calls our current scholarly

complicity in neglecting the relations of power to the work being produced a “conspiracy

of silence.”64

Alan Dershowitz is author of the provocative book The Case for Israel that asserts

that Israel can do no wrong. Norman Finkelstein’s book Beyond Chutzpah is in large part

dedicated to discrediting Dershowitz. Finkelstein writes that books like Dershowitz’ only

become best sellers because of a “systematic institutional bias” (his emphasis).65 This

means that within the system that produced this work there is an inherent leaning towards

a particular conclusion. Said explains that our “methodological consciousness” is

inextricable from the market pressures on academia; that is to say, one fails to question
their own motivation if someone is buying what they are selling.66 Ironically, Dershowitz

accuses Mearsheimer and Walt of exactly the same “scholarly derelictions” that

Finkelstein accuses Dershowitz of.67 In academia, analysis of the relationship between

scholarship and power is ignored all too often and thus a mechanism for reconciling the

truth between these scholars eludes us.

The key that differentiates between the two camps is the methodology by which

truth is produced. Said, Finkelstein, Chomsky, Mearsheimer and Walt fundamentally

disagree with Huntington, Dershowitz, the Bush administration and mainstream media,

not on the facts, but on the regime of truth employed. For Said, the domain of so called

“experts” on Islam and the Middle East (Dershowitz is one who is called upon about

Israel frequently) amounts to “crisis management,” and the U.S. dominated paradigm is

therefore confined to “geopolitical and economic interests” facilitated by a knowledge

production structure that is “unimaginable” to the individual.68 These “experts” are cogs

in the regime of truth and are utilized for the purpose they serve to power, not so much

for their “expertise.” Ultimately, the decision makers that send countries to war are of

lesser intellectual clout than the scholars who contemplate the nature of war and study its

effects on society. For this reason, it is paramount that intellectuals exercise serious self-

criticism and decision makers take a more pluralistic approach.69

The “Promised Land”

An image is constructed by Israeli leaders and sympathizers that depicts Israel as

weak, vulnerable, and victimized.70 This is not true however, since Israel has enjoyed

military supremacy over its adversaries since the conception of the state71 and thus such

jingoism is superfluous. The imagery and discourse around the Israel-Palestine conflict
says very little then, if anything, about the Israelis or the Palestinians. It says a great deal

about our society at large, and our regime of truth. Finkelstein echoed this sentiment in

asking “what it says about intellectual life” when a tenured professor like Alan

Dershowitz is permitted to proliferate nonsense?72

In pop-culture, the acute irony of the “new anti-Semitism” was articulated well,

by a Jewish comedian no less, on the hit show Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld’s “Uncle Leo” was

constantly accusing people, falsely, of being anti-Semitic when things went wrong in his

life.73 As hilarious as the parody may be, it is as if there is a taken-for-grantedness in our

culture about such prejudice and hypocrisy. We do not just conspire in ‘silence,’ I argue,

but also in the degree to which we bestow power to regimes of truth to produce palatable

myths for ourselves to insulate us from the harsh truths of reality. Ultimately, people

decide whether the contradictions in the regime of truth are tolerable or not. The real

sources of conflict in this world are cleverly obfuscated so as to keep people running

around clinging to false positives (and false promises!).

Ergo, the nature and status of belief is therefore invariably tied to the regime of

truth. It should go without saying that religion, although not the proximate cause of the

conflict, plays an inextricable role in the local Israel-Palestine conflict as well as the

global clash of definitions. Public perceptions are garnered, in large part, through the

institutional global proliferation of dogmatic religious ‘truths.’ Burgeoning intellectual

Sam Harris highlights the clear geo-political consequences of belief by citing the

statistical fact that 44 percent of Americans believe that Israel is the “God”-given

“promised land” of the Jewish people.74 Land claims based on birthright are still based

only on social facts and not on empirical evidence and thus are highly disputable.
According to Norman Finkelstein, the essence of Zionism is to create those facts and

allow sufficient time to pass so it would be impossible to reverse.75 The pernicious

influence of power on truth has always been best exemplified by religious-style thinking

– even in atheistic communism. If the power structure in the regime of truth were to

reveal to its constituents that these tenets are nothing more than potent myths and

metaphors, it would lose its power base and thereby forfeit its ability to produce truth.

The compromise many people have reached is to be a religious moderate, but Sam

Harris argues that this acts as a cover for religious fundamentalism since it is politically

taboo to criticise religious literalism.76 We leave the fundamentalists and extremists to

criticize each other’s faith, which accomplishes absolutely nothing. What Harris is

getting at is people are behaving in a rational way within their given regime of truth. In

the middle ages, heretics were lynched and burned alive for five centuries because the

inquisitors acted in accordance with scripture.77 This notion infects the social scientific

discourse as well, in that one is scorned and vilified for analyzing taboos as it threatens

the established order. Tolerating unfounded beliefs is intellectual bankruptcy, says Harris,

because it means you can not call a spade a spade. He concludes that the only spiritual

truths and experiences we can tolerate are those that transcend culture.78

To return to the clash of definitions, Said further excoriates Huntington by

highlighting the “counter culture,” secular movements, dissent, and discussion that occurs

within Islamic societies, and “attacks [the] official and orthodox.”79 However, he notes

that the recent history of the Middle East has been a struggle to transcend religious and

ethnic discord and to aspire to a sort of secular democracy.80 One such example in the

“promised land” is the so-called Israeli New Historians – a more united and pragmatic
front, much like the “New Atheists”81 – who have effectively pried open the negotiation

framework, regarding the refugee problem, through various tradeoffs such as partial

Israeli guilt acknowledgement for partial Palestinian concession on the right of return of

Palestinian refugees.82 Far from a consensus and further from a practical solution, the

movement is significant because it represents crossing the threshold of a major taboo in

Israel. In 2001 there were attempts by the Likud Government to reform the education

curriculum in order to induce “more patriotism.” They were subsequently thwarted and

now the publications of the New Historians are taught as well.83 What is required then is

constant vocal pressure by academics on taboos until the dissenting voices reach a critical

mass and infringe upon the incumbent regime of truth.

Conclusion

In terms of law, the only body that has jurisdiction over the issue of Palestine is

the United Nations.84 The international community is nearly unanimous, in multiple U.N.

resolutions, on how to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict: some form of a two-state

settlement with Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and a just resolution of

the refugee issue.85 I thus lay to rest questions about the practical solution. The purpose of

my essay was to analyze the current regime of truth that, in a struggle for power, causes

academics to butt heads, blocks states compliance with the higher truth of the U.N.

courts, and dissuades our officials from arriving at such pragmatic conclusions

themselves. My recommendations have been iterated throughout this paper. They are,

first, for our full acquiescence to our limited “human nature.” Second, a more pragmatic

and postmodernist pursuance of knowledge and truth must not only be enforced in

universities, but extended to the mainstream media, government, and religious

institutions as well – the main appendages of social ‘truth’ proliferation – so far as they

may validate the truth produced in universities to be free from the hegemony of power.

We must be vigilant to overcome the psychological despotism of regimes of truth that

perpetuate the socially constructed boundaries that divide and exploit us. Third, I urge

states and individuals to aspire to the U.N. as the more legitimate forum for truth

production based on the collective intentionality of states and the principles of perpetual

peace. Finally, in the words of the 18th century Quakers, we must “speak truth to

power.”86
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chaotic and messy situation; multiple mistakes or problems happening in rapid succession
2
"Glossary." International Politics on the World Stage. http://highered.mcgraw-
hill.com/sites/0073526304/student_view0/glossary.html (accessed January 28, 2009).
3
The Question of Palestine and the United Nations. (New York: United Nations, 2003), 18
4
Alexander Lyon Macfie, Orientalism: A Reader [book on-line]. (London: NYU Press, 2001) 42, available from
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5
Edward W. Said, Covering Islam. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981) xvi
6
Macfie 41
7
Ibid.
8
Macfie 41
9
J.R. Lucas, The Principles of Politics. (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1966) 3
10
Macfie 42
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid. 43
13
Said, Covering Islam xviii
14
Jonathan B. Isacoff, Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Pragmatism and Historical Inquiry. (New York: Lexington Books,
2006) 25
15
Isacoff 53-54
16
Ibid. 55
17
Ibid. 175
18
Isacoff 175
19
Ibid.
20
Said, Covering Islam xiii
21
Isacoff 175
22
Ibid.
23
L.H. Martin et al, (1988) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault [excerpt online]. London: Tavistock.
pp.9-15. accessed 24 January 2009; available from http://www.thefoucauldian.co.uk/techne.htm; Internet
24
Noam Chomsky and Peter Mitchell. Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. (New York: New Press, 2002),
124-5
25
Norman G. Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2008) 349
26
The Question of Palestine and the United Nations, p. 18
27
Chomsky and Mitchell. Understanding Power 125
28
Ibid.
29
cf. Chomsky, Finkelstein
30
Chomsky and Mitchell 127
31
Finkelstein 84
32
Evidence here is given by a 2004 Pew poll that shows animosity towards Muslims was increased by the Iraq war while the
imagined bigotry against Jews not changed from a decade earlier, Finkelstein 76
33
Said, Covering Islam 140
34
Ibid. 139
35
Ibid. 131
36
Said, Covering Islam 131
37
Ibid. xvii
38
Ibid. 149
39
Ibid. 149
40
Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?," Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993).
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19930601faessay5188/samuel-p-huntington/the-clash-of-civilizations.html (accessed January
18, 2009).
41
Report of the High-level Group. (New York: United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, 2006), 17, available online at
http://www.unaoc.org/repository/HLG_Report.pdf. Accessed 20 January 2009
42
Ibid. 17
43
Said, Covering Islam 149
44
Ibid. 152
45
Ibid. 153
46
Edward Said, "The Myth of ‘The Clash of Civilizations’." Media Education Foundation, Amherst, September 16, 1996. 8,
available online at http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/404/transcript_404.pdf. Accessed 20 January 2009
47
Said, "The Myth of ‘The Clash of Civilizations’." 8
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid.
50
Finkelstein 64
51
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, "The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy," Middle East Policy 8, no. 3
(2006): 31
52
Mearsheimer and Walt 31
53
Ibid. 32
54
Ibid.
55
Ibid. 33
56
Mearsheimer and Walt 33
57
Ibid. 41
58
Ibid. 44
59
Andrew J. Hurley, Israel and the New World Order. (Santa Barbara: Fithian Pr, 1991) 126
60
Finkelstein 79
61
Mearsheimer and Walt 43
62
Finkelstein 70
63
Said, Covering Islam 142
64
Ibid. 143
65
Finkelstein 17
66
Said, Covering Islam 141
67
Finkelstein lii
68
Said, Covering Islam 145
69
It is important to note that even this virtue can be abused by totalitarian systems, as it was under Maoism, where unabated
elites hypocritically forced dissidents to self-criticize, sometimes only to be executed.
70
Mearsheimer and Walt 34
71
Ibid. 35
72
Finkelstein 95
73
"h2g2 - 'Seinfeld' - the TV Series." BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A972326 (accessed January 28, 2009).
74
Sam Harris, "The Problem of Religious Belief." Idea City, Toronto, June 24, 2005.
75
Finkelstein 12
76
Harris, Sam. "The Problem of Religious Belief." Idea City, Toronto, June 24, 2005.
77
Ibid.
78
Ibid.
79
Said, "The Myth of ‘The Clash of Civilizations’." 8
80
Said, Covering Islam 138
81
In reference to Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris who have collectively launched
an anti-Crusade against the pervasive threat of dogmatism and superstition by organized religions
82
Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch, "From Taboo to the Negotiable: The Israeli New Historians and the Changing Representation of
the Palestinian Refugee Problem." Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 2 (2007): 241
83
Hirsch 253
84
Hurley 317
85
Finkelstein 6
86
"Speak Truth to Power." The Religious Society of Friends. http://www.quaker.org/sttp.html (accessed January 28, 2009).