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The following is a guest post by By Elliott A. Green
(Green’s post is a response to an essay in the Belief section of CiF, 0n Nov. 29, by Scott Atran, titled: The Taliban’s Expat Jihadists. Among the many extraordinary claims made by Atran – in an essay which attempts to downplay and rationalize Taliban Islamic extremism – was was his allegation that “[ancient] Jewish partisans carried out suicide attacks to incite Roman retaliation against the civilian population and so increase popular support for the rebels’ cause.”)
The name “partisan”, which probably stems from the resistance of the Parthian people to Roman occupation 2,100 years ago, was first systematically applied to Jewish zealots and other “terrorists” just after the time of Jesus. Jewish partisans carried out suicide attacks to incite Roman retaliation against the civilian population and so increase popular support for the rebels’ cause. – Scott Atran
They say that paper is the most tolerant thing in the world; it will bear anything, including Scott Atran’s inventions. If Atran’s references to ancient history have no grounds and no weight, then what he writes about contemporary events concerning Israel should be seen as having similar unreliability. And the publication where he writes such fanciful tales ought to be likewise seen as unreliable.
To start with the word “partisan.” He claims that it comes from alleged ancient Parthian “resistance.” The respected Random House American College Dictionary tells us that the word means “an adherent or supporter of a person, party or cause,” or “a member of a party of light or irregular troops…,” and that it came into English from French and into French from the Italian partigiano. The French Dictionnaire Pratique du Francais (Hachette 1987) agrees on the origin, while the French Le Petit Larousse does not indicate an origin but adds the meaning: “A voluntary combatant. . . fighting for a national, political or religious ideal.” Finally, Il Grande Italiano 2008 (Hoepli) basically concurs on the meanings, while telling us that partigiano comes from the word “parte” (= side, faction or party, as in a soccer match or lawsuit, among other meanings). No mention of Parthians.
Be that as it may, were the Parthians an oppressed people fighting colonial occupiers? Hardly. They were a dynasty of rulers emerging from what is now northern Iran. Most importantly, they were imperial rivals of Rome with which they fought several wars.
There was a competition between empires, not a struggle for self-determination or liberty on the part of Parthians.
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The debasement of 9/11 memory, & why the Guardian Left can’t take Palestinian terrorism seriously
October 31, 2011 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Chronicle of Higher Education, Comment is Free, Gaza, Guardian, Hamas, Harriet Sherwood, New York Times, Richard Landes, Scott Atran, Terrorism | by Adam Levick | 29 comments
The Guardian sure knows how to find them.
In a Guardian video post titled “Scott Atran: US foreign policy is set by people who’ve almost no insight into human welfare, education, labor, desires, or hopes“, Atran criticizes the Americans who administer USAID (the US agency responsible for dispersing civilian foreign aid) who, he argues, lack his sophisticated understanding of the people around the world receiving such support.
Who is Scott Atran? Well, he’s an American academic (an anthropologist by training) who has become a commentator on the issues of terrorism and national security, and has contributed to the Huffington Post and New York Times.
Atran, writing for the NYT, in the context of criticizing a US law banning the provision of “material support” to foreign terrorist groups, wrote the following about his discussions with Hamas:
While Atran’s Guardian video largely deals with USAID, he frames the issue by first contextualizing what he sees as America’s appalling ignorance about the world by briefly commenting on the significance of 9/11.
The money quote – “Never before in human history has so few people with so few means caused such fear in so many” – has been advanced previously by Atran in an essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Such a passage certainly puts in proper context his capacity to believe that Hamas terrorists merely desire the same things we all want: peace, prosperity, and co-existence – a perfect illustration of what Richard Landes refers to as cognitive ego-centrism.
Atran’s academic detachment in the face of reactionary terror groups who intentionally murder innocent civilians represents a perfect example of a Western left (especially, but not exclusively, of the Guardian variety) who can’t wrap their minds around the immutable malevolence of Islamist terrorist movements.
This failure of moral imagination – informed by a cultural and intellectual elite which mocks the idea that there is real evil in the world – represents one of the most serious strategic liabilities to Israel and the West.
Atran’s contempt for Americans’ “hysterical” fear of terrorism following the murder of nearly 3000 civilians on 9/11 – by attackers who would have been happy if the number of killed had been in the tens of thousands – can not be casually dismissed as the unserious musings of another academic.
Atran’s views quite accurately represent the cognitive process which informs the Guardian’s Left’s appalling lack of empathy for a Jewish state under siege.
You can’t understand Harriet Sherwood’s callousness towards the threat posed to Israelis by terrorists in Gaza without coming to terms with how common such views are within the ideological circles she travels.
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