The good news is that in the Biden era, this is one of the less destructive things tax money is being wasted on.
More on this story. “US Taxpayers to Fund Revisionist, Anti-Zionist History of Middle East Jews,” by Lyn Julius, JNS.org, December 5, 2021:
JNS.org – For some years now, the creeping politicization of the arts and social sciences in western universities has been a cause for concern. Now the rewriting of Jewish history in the Middle East and North Africa has received a huge boost. The US-based academics Lior Sternfeld, Michelle Campos, and Orit Bashkin have been awarded a $250,000 grant to “reimagine” Jewish life in the Middle East before Zionism.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), one of the two largest grant-givers in Pennsylvania, is funding a “large-scale collaborative project to rewrite the histories, narratives, and memories of and by Jews in the Middle East in the 19th-21st centuries.” The money is to be spent on a multi-authored monograph as well as a special edition of Jewish Social Studies, considered by many to be the most prestigious journal in the field of Jewish studies.
NEH has a reputation for pushing a left-wing agenda, and is controversial enough for the Trump administration to have wished to have it defunded.
“We’re talking about the history of one million people,” Sternfeld told his university, Penn State. “Most history books just want to show that Zionism was the only alternative for Jews living in the Middle East. To say that Jews were subject to restrictions that would not allow them to prosper and live in the Middle East is just nonsense. Jews were part of the society from Morocco to Afghanistan, and from central Asia to Yemen. We are going to look at Jews not as a group of people waiting for redemption by Zionism but as people who live and prosper and work and suffer and cry and laugh in the Middle East as part of Middle Eastern societies.”
Sternfeld is the author of a book on the minuscule number of Jews who supported the Islamic revolution. Campos wrote a nostalgic account of Ottoman pluralism and in her book “New Babylonians,” Bashkin portrays Iraqi Jews as privileged nationalists. By describing Jews as “part of society” these academics deny a separate Jewish identity and ultimately peoplehood.
Both Campos and Sternfeld were signatories to anti-Israel resolutions brought before the American Historical Association. More recently, Campos, Sternfeld, and Bashkin signed on to the “Statement on Israel and Palestine in Jewish Studies” accusing Israel of engaging in “state violence” against Hamas.
The book may be used to obfuscate the causes of the exodus, to denigrate Israel and re-state the myth of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Muslims before 1948.
Sternfeld has pooh-poohed efforts to memorialize the exodus of Jews from Arab countries as a “large-scale national project – the writing of a ‘lachrymose’ history of the Jews of the Middle East, so as to justify contemporary Israeli policies, and to make up for a generations-long marginalization of Oriental Jews in Zionist historiography.”
Much as Sternfeld might wish to downplay the story of the exodus, it is a fact that 99 percent of Jews have left Arab and Muslim countries. Jewish refugees did not all go to Israel, but Israel made it its mission to rescue vast numbers of Jews who had no chance of being given a refuge anywhere else.
Announcing the grant, Tobias Brinkmann, associate professor of Jewish studies and history at Penn State, said: “Campos, Sternfeld and Bashkin are questioning the powerful narratives that depict Jews in the Middle East as backward and isolated. With this project, they are shining an important light on the long history of close interactions between Jews and other groups in the Middle East before the dramatic changes that occurred during the first half of the 20th century. This NEH grant is clearly a recognition of research excellence.”
No one is questioning that Jews lived and could prosper in the Middle East and North Africa. Indeed they did so for a lot longer than Arabs, who conquered the region 1,000 years after Jews had settled there. No serious scholar would argue that life for Jews was one, continuous chronicle of misfortune. Jews interacted with the society around them, especially in trade and business. Arabic was the most widely spoken Jewish language for centuries.
But Jews were always a vulnerable minority, suffering from institutionalized discrimination as dhimmis under Islam. As one pundit has observed: “The NEH would never fund revisionist history that denied that black people were discriminated against during segregation. Why is it funding the same sort of revisionism against Israel?”
Sternfeld elides the pre-colonial condition of dhimmi status — where unquestionably, Jews suffered restrictions and a precarious existence — and their situation during the colonial era, when Jews benefited from education and greater security. The good life many enjoyed under the British and French protectorates and mandates was fatally threatened by the rise of Arab nationalism and Islamism, resulting in their forced exodus….
gravenimage says
US taxpayers to fund revisionist, anti-Zionist history of Jews in the Middle East
………………
Just sickening false revisionist history.
Lior Sternfeld is a nastly piece of work. He wants to abolish the Supreme Court. He is a big fan of the Mullahs persecuting Jews in Iran. He is also busy raising money right now to bring in more Afghan Muslims.
bill says
If the Jews were so secure in the ME, how was it that the Mufti of Jerusalem plotted with Hitler to exterminate them. No doubt if Rommel had succeeded in fighting his way to the ME they would have quickly rounded up the Jews for destruction
gravenimage says
Also true, Bill.
somehistory says
Truth is hated. That is one very large reason why Jesus…a Jew…was hated so much. He told the Truth that most of the people…esp those in positions of power…didn’t want to hear.
By lying, these three **so-called academics,** all creeps, get their hands on a bunch of money they didn’t earn in order to publish more lies and feel important when others repeat the lies.
They hate the Truth.
Kepha says
The history of the treatment of Dhimmi in the Islamic world has been whitewashed for a very long time. It is something I bring up whenever I teach World History, noting that Islamic “tolerance” was such only when compared to the expulsions of the Jews from Spain or the massacres of the Rhineland’s Jews by the Crusaders. Every so often, I mention Dario Fernandez-Morera’s _Myth of the Andalusian Paradise_.
Westman says
This is like watching slow-motion murder of Israel and its Jews. The three “Academic” mouseketeers know the Binen Admin, sponsors of the NEH, and the Hard left are baying for Israel’s destruction.
They are America’s version of Pakistani malcontents who spread the lies of “blasphemy” to get someone killed and seize their property. The genocidal meme of, “From the river to the sea”, must play in their head like a musical earworm.
So they will light the fuse then say they had nothing to do with the next Intifada or Hamas attacks on Israel.
As an Agnostic I am amazed at how the bible prophecies are lining up, the gathering of the Jews, and much of the world pitting itself against Israel because of Islam and dependence on oil. According to its eschatology, the world nations against Israel will have God’s judgement fall upon them in this world, before the next. Future observations will verify or disprove it, yet, the parallels are disconcerting.
The coming Iran-Israel War will complete the polarization. Who will choose real democracy?
somehistory says
When I was very young, before I had studied the Bible very much and without much understanding, I was *amazed* to find out that there were many prophecies made hundreds of years ahead of things that happened. Such as Isaiah foretelling the downfall of Babylon, the role of Cyrus…by name…., and how the river would be dried up and the large doors would be left open…200 years before it all happened.
The destruction of the city of Tyre…including the part on the island…was foretold well in advance by Ezekiel.
Those things were so interesting to me, and one of the main reasons that I believe what the Bible says about Israel, the nations gathered against her, and the Battle of Armageddon.
OLD GUY says
Our government needs to stop WASTING our money.
gravenimage says
I *wish* this were just a waste of money, like some lame “art project” that no one wants to see–instead, this is a lot uglier and more destructive than just a waste.
Dov Berrol says
Excellent article by a Mizrachi Jew responding to the revisionists:
The anti-Zionist Mizrahi heritage revisionist problem | Rachel Wahba | The Blogs
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-anti-zionist-mizrahi-heritage-revisionist-problem/
Dhanush Dhari Misra says
GOD, SAVE YOUR CHOSEN PEOPLE!