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Views and controversies concerning Juan Cole

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Juan Cole is an academic scholar on the Middle East and, since 2002, an a media commentator and blog pundit. His political comments and views have attracted lively controversy.

Cole's Views

On the war in Iraq

Cole is a staunch critic of the George W. Bush administration's policy in Iraq. He has been highly critical of the conduct of the American and British post-War efforts to rebuild Iraq and particularly its government. In particular, the decisions to disband the Iraqi Army, the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, and the details of the interim Constitution of Iraq have been problematic for Cole. As of May 2006, he believes Iraq is actually in a state of civil war and is not optimistic that large scale conflict between Sunnis, Shias, Turkomen, and Kurds, or the breakup of Iraq similar to Yugoslavia could be avoided in the absence of the occupation forces. He has been highly skeptical of the war's value in combatting international terrorism and suggests it could increase terrorism by drawing into Iraqi and other Muslim recruits (Jihadists) who have been angered by the US invasion, and would otherwise have not become violent extremists. He has been criticised for making contradictory statements on the Iraqi invasion. For example, on March 19, 2003, on the eve of the invasion, he wrote approvingly of Saddam Hussein's removal by force: "I remain convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides" Cole responded to these critics saying "My position on the war was in fact very complex. I thought it was a terrible idea, but declined to come out against it because I believed that if Saddam's genocidal regime could be removed by the international community in a legal way, that some good would have been accomplished. But the bottom line is that I thought a war would be legal only if the United Nations Security Council authorized it."

On the "Israel lobby" and US foreign policy

Cole has been a harsh critic of a group of current and former US government officials, which he alleges have ties to the Likud Party. Cole believes these individuals cannot be trusted to put the interests of the US ahead of those of their alleged other loyalties. Charging that this group has dual loyalties, Cole writes: "I believe that Doug Feith, for instance, has dual loyalties to the Israeli Likud Party and to the U.S. Republican Party. He thinks that their interests are completely congruent. And I also think that if he has to choose, he will put the interests of the Likud above the interests of the Republican Party.
I don't think there is anything a priori wrong with Feith being so devoted to the Likud Party. That is his prerogative. But as an American, I don't want a person with those sentiments to serve as the number 3 man in the Pentagon. I frankly don't trust him to put America first.

Cole sees support in the controversial Mearsheimer and Walt 2006 working paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

Cole has stated that, "political dual loyalties have nothing to do with any particular ethnicity,". Some critics see Cole's criticism of certain US government officials as holding dual loyalites as an "anti-semitic conspiracy theory" and an example of new antisemitism. Efraim Karsh, professor and Head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, writes: "Cole may express offense at the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but their obsession with the supposed international influence of "world Zionism" resonates powerfully in his own writings."

Cole has responded that his US neoconservatives and Israeli "Likudnik" critics have used claims of "anti-semitism" against him not because they believe he is anti-semitic, but rather as a tool of intimidation due to his political views: "So this is the way it goes with the Likudniks. First they harass you and try to have you spied on. Then they threaten, bully and try to intimidate you. And if that fails and you show some spine, then they simply lie about you. (In this case the lies are produced by quoting half a passage, or denuding it of its context, or adopting a tone of pained indignation when quoting a perfectly obvious observation)... The thing that most pains me in all this is the use of the word 'anti-semite'." He has in turn accused his critics of "...encouraging a new kind of anti-semitism, which sees it as unacceptable that Jews should be liberals or should criticize Likud Party policies". He has also made it clear that he does not feel most American Jews were in favor of the war in Iraq or support the interests of AIPAC, and states that, "no one should blame 'the Jews' for the Iraq War."

On the legitimacy of Israel

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Cole has stated that he views the state of Israel as "a project of Jewish nationalism that is as legitimate as any other national project". Critics however have argued out that Cole's position vis-a-vis Israel's existence is more ambiguous than this statement would suggest. For example, Cole has also written "While one certainly cheers the British for giving refuge in Palestine to Jews fleeing Hitler, it would have been nobler yet to admit them to the British Isles rather than saddling a small, poor peasant country with 500,000 immigrants hungry to make the place their own." . Efraim Karsh in particular has taken exception to this statement, claiming that by it, Cole "makes clear that he thinks the Middle East would have been better off without the Jewish state. Discounting altogether the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine, so as to misrepresent Israel's creation as an ordinary colonialist project."

Cole believes that the United States, as Israel's "close ally and friend", should defend Israel from its enemies" , but at the same time he also claims that Israel's supporters in the US government "use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv", such as the war on Iraq.". Alexander Joffe criticized this comment, claiming that "Suggestions that American Jewish officials desired 'someone else's boys' to fight is anti-Semitic and a common refrain in Cole's commentary".

Cole is a vocal critic of some of Israel's policies claiming "Israel as a state is not perfect and cannot be above criticism in democratic societies, including practical criticism." Specifically, Cole was critical of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and in particular "Ariel Sharon's arrogant trampling on the basic human rights of Palestinians" during 2001 and 2002 and felt that "U.S. government keeps silent about Israeli human rights abuses." With regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Cole held the position in 2002 that the "main obstacle to a comprehensive peace has been Israel's refusal to give the Palestinians and the Syrians the same deal they gave Egypt." Cole has long advocated a comprehensive Middle East peace granting the Palestinians their own state on the West Bank and Gaza. He advocates peace treaties with full trade in accord with the Arab Peace Initiative.

Controversies

Expertise

Efraim Karsh has challenged Cole's expertise on subjects he addresses in his blog: "Having done hardly any independent research on the twentieth-century Middle East, Cole's analysis of this era is essentially derivative, echoing the conventional wisdom among Arabists and Orientalists regarding Islamic and Arab history, the creation of the modern Middle East in the wake of World War I, and its relations with the outside world." . Critics have characterized Cole's extra-academic work as promoting, "polemic over scholarship" Cole has also been criticized for altering his blog posts after they were demonstrated to contain incorrect historical information, while failing to indicate changes had been made. cited in .

Campus Watch "Dossier"

Cole threatened legal action against Daniel Pipes and historian Martin Kramer, after Campus Watch, published a "dossier" on Cole on their Web site. Cole asserted that the document (found online at) incorrectly portrayed him as a supporter of Islamic extremism, exposed him to acts of violence, and thus constituted "stalking."

MEMRI

Cole was threatened with legal action by Yigal Carmon of for making what Carmon described as "patently false" claims about MEMRI, an organization led by Carmon. Cole called MEMRI, "a sophisticated anti-Arab propaganda machine...essentially on behalf of the Likud party of Israel..funded to the tune of $60 million a year by someone" MEMRI's actual funding, as reported to the IRS is less than $2 million a year. In a personal letter to Cole, Carmon objected to Cole's statements, saying that they went, "beyond what could be considered legitimate criticism, and...qualify as slander and libel" and objected to Cole's "trying to paint MEMRI in a conspiratorial manner by portraying us as a rich, sinister group". Cole posted Carmon's letter on his blog, along with a suggestion that Carmon was threatening to sue not because he found Cole's remarks libelous, but out of an attempt to silence him using a Strategic lawsuit against public participation. "

Translation disputes

Osama Bin Laden Video

Right before the November 2004 US Presidential election, Osama bin Laden released a video in which he said:"...your security is not in the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaeda. No. Your security is in your own hands. And every that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security." MEMRI, an organization specializing in producing translations of Arabic language and Farsi media, used the modern standard Arabic definition of "wilayah" as "province or administrative district" (as in as in the Arabic name of the United States of America, الولايات الأمريكية المتح), to translate "wilayah" as "U.S. state" and suggested that bin Laden was attempting to speak to voters in individual states to influence their choice of candidate . Cole attacked MEMRI's translation on his blog, calling it a "re-interpretation". He speculated that bin Laden was not using standard Arabic, but rather, either an archaic or a fundamentalists' sense of the word meaning "government", or that he might have lapsed into a local idiom in which "wilayah" might mean "city".. Al-Jazeera translated the expression in question as "every state".

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments on Israel

In an October 26, 2005 speech, Iranian President Ahmadinehad referred to a statement that had been made by Imam Khomeini, calling it "very wise": "een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e Qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." The phrase was translated by the New York Times as Israel,"must be wiped off the map". A similar translation was provided by the Associated Press, Al-Jazeera, and Iran's official IRNA news agency . Cole translated the phrase as, the occupation of Jerusalem, "must from the page of time." MEMRI similarly translated the phrase as, 'This regime that is occupying Qods must be eliminated from the pages of history" Most translators interpreted Ahmadinejad's speech as a threat to destroy Israel as a Jewish state, while Cole has suggested it refers to an inevitable and grand historical process. Christopher Hitchens criticized Cole's interpretation as attempting to minimizing the Iranian threat. . Cole states that "Ahmadinejad...has condemned mass killing of any sort and was not threatening military action (he is in any case not in command of the Iranian military). He compares his hope for an end to any Zionist regime in geographical Palestine to Khomeini's prediction that the Soviet Union would one day vanish. It wasn't a hope to kill Soviet citizens, but a desire for regime change." Andrew Sullivan, a friend of Hitchens who denied Cole's charge that Hitchens was drunk when he submitted his Slate article, suggested that this was a "rhetorical sleight of hand... an attempt to deny the existence of a real genocidal evil in the world that Cole himself knows exists"

Cole and other pundits

References

  1. Cole, Juan Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion Informed Comment, March 31, 2003
  2. Cole, Juan Cole on Iraq, 2002-2003 Informed Comment, June 12, 2005
  3. Cole, Juan Dual Loyalties Informed Comment, September 09, 2004
  4. Cole, Juan. Breaking the silence, Salon.com, April 19. 2006.
  5. Cole, Juan Dual Loyalties Informed Comment, September 09, 2004
  6. Juan Cole, Media - and MESA - Darling by Jonathan Calt Harris (FrontPageMagazine) December 7, 2004
  7. Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies Alexander H. Joffe, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2006 13(1)
  8. ^ Juan Cole's Bad blog, by Efraim Karsh in the The New Republic
  9. Cole, Juan "Character Assassination", Informed Comment, December 8, 2004
  10. Cole, Juan Fixing the Intelligence Around the Facts Part DeuxInformed Comment, June 20, 2005
  11. ^ The Misuse of Anti-Semitism, Juan Cole, The History News Network, September 30 2006
  12. Review of Bernard Lewis' "What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response", Juan Cole, Global Dialogue, 27 January 2003
  13. ^ Have Arabs or Muslims Always Hated Israel, Juan Cole, December 14 2004
  14. Pentagon/Israel Spying Case Expands: Fomenting a War on Iran, by Juan Cole in Informed Comment
  15. ^ Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies Alexander H. Joffe, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2006 13(1) Cite error: The named reference "DeclineOfMES" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  16. Cole Fire, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 24, 2006
  17. Cole is poor choice for Mideast position, Michael Rubin, Yale Daily News, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
  18. Yale's Next Tenured Radical?, Eliana Johnson and Mitch Webber, The New York Sun, April 18, 2006
  19. Making Cole-slaw of history, Martin Kramer, Sandbox blog, 10 July 2005
  20. Qui custodiet ipsos custodes? Campus Watch, Martin Kramer, Sandstorm blog, September 18, 2002
  21. Dossiers: COLE, Juan, Screenshot on ei: The Electronic Intifada
  22. ^ Bin Laden's Audio: Threat to States? at Juan Cole's blog. November 02, 2004
  24. Intimidation by Israeli-Linked Organization Aimed at US Academic. November 23, 2004
  25. Osama Bin Laden Tape Threatens U.S. States by Yigal Carmon. November 1, 2004
  26. Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech at Al-Jazeera. 01 November 2004
  29. Special Dispatch Series 1013 MEMRI, October 28, 2005
  30. The Cole Report, Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Tuesday, May 2, 2006
  31. ^ Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War! Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, May 03, 2006
  33. Hitch vs Cole, Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish blog, May 3, 2006