https://www.jns.org/opinion/israel-bashing-disguised-as-jewish-studies/
Michael Fischbach’s book review in “American Jewish History” is a vicious screed that challenges the very legitimacy of Israel’s existence and justifies the anti-Israel “right of return.”
It may not be news anymore when a Jewish professor bashes Israel. But there should still be outrage when a respected U.S. Jewish academic journal publishes a virulent attack on Israel disguised as scholarship.
The journal in question, American Jewish History, is published by the American Jewish Historical Society, a distinguished scholarly organization. Its latest issue features heavily footnoted essays on topics like health-care workers on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s and the debate among Orthodox Jews over family planning in the 1950s.
And then, sticking out like a sore thumb is Michael Fischbach’s tirade against Israel, presented as a normal, scholarly book review.
Fischbach is a professor of history at Virginia’s Randolph-Macon College. According to his curriculum vitae, he has a history of working with extremists, such as the pro-PLO Institute for Palestine Studies, and writing articles for the Journal of Palestine Studies, a viscously anti-Israel propaganda publication.
But it’s not Fischbach’s track record that is the problem here. It’s what he writes in his book review, where he unleashes attack after attack aimed at the State of Israel.
He writes that the “settler movement creating a Jewish state out of 77 percent of Palestine/Israel” caused “the permanent exile of 80 percent of those who had lived there.”