A while back, Slate published a C. Hitchens column alleging that an Iraqi official under Saddam, Wissam al-Zahawie, actually did scout out yellowcake uranium from Niger. I still find it dubious, but that’s not why I’m posting. The other day Slate posted a lengthy and apparently authentic reply from Zahawie himself. In the course of this reply, Zahawie defends himself against charges of antisemitism by mentioning, of course, some of his best Jewish friends. But there’s also this:
In addition to the above-mentioned names, the writings of the likes of Ahad Ha’am, Judah Magnes, Hannah Arendt, Morris Ernst and Moshe Menuhin; among the living writers we have Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Lenni Brenner, John Rose, Simcha Flapan, Yehoshafat Harkabi, and still many others who provide ample evidence of the difference between being a Jew and becoming a Zionist.
There’s one problem: Ahad Ha’am (“one of the people,” a.k.a. Asher Ginsberg) was a Zionist. One of the seminal pre-state Zionist thinkers, in fact. Hannah Arendt and Judah Magnes? Idiosyncratic in their view of Zionism, perhaps, but certainly not anti-Zionist. Yoking together Arendt with Norman Finkelstein and Lenni Brenner? That takes intellectual incoherence to a new level.
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