Joshua Blakeney Responds to Patrick Ross's Defence of Robyn Urback's Article in Which She Invents Anti-Semitic Remarks

ABOVE: The Examiner's Patrick Ross who claims to have been "alcohol fuelled since 2004"

Joshua Blakeney Responds to Patrick Ross's Defence of Robyn Urback's Article in Which She Invents Anti-Semitic Remarks

I think Mr. Ross should regret his latest article which was clearly rushed and is rather incoherent and poorly written. Mr. Ross as usual flexes the truth to fit with his predetermined conclusions. I, Joshua Blakeney, have never called anybody an "Israeli shill." Please could Mr. Ross provide a source that I've produced in which I characterize an antagonist as an “Israeli shill.” Please could he provide a source which Ms. Peto produced in which she characterizes a detractor as an “Israeli shill.” Where are the “mounds of "Israeli shill" accusations” upon which we sit? Or is evidence of secondary importance to the self anointed defender of academic standards in Canada?

Mr. Ross obviously didn't canvass Ms. Peto's exceptional thesis.

Mr. Ross writes:

"very few people could accept the idea that the color of a Jew's skin invalidates their claim to victimhood during the Holocaust."

If he had taken the time to read Ms. Peto's acclaimed thesis he would surely not have suggested that Ms. Peto was questioning the victimhood of those, such as her grandmother, who suffered DURING the Shoah. Ms. Peto questions the hegemonic way such martyrdom is eulogized, interpreted and disseminated contemporarily. She questions the professed victimhood of some Ashkenazi Jews who seem to live comparatively comfortable lives today. Indeed evidence suggests that Arab Semites are far more victimized than Jewish Semites in the world today. Professor Keefer has demonstrated this in the book he edited Antisemitism Real and Imagined:Responses to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (2010). The book was characterized by Gerald Caplan, in a Globe and Mail article as “indispensable” and “important.”

I quote Professor Keefer’s recent letter to the Premier of Ontario:

“[In] Antisemitism Real and Imagined (“Data and Deception: Quantitative Evidence of Antisemitism,” pp. 165-205), [m]y conclusion, after detailed comparative analysis of the available statistical evidence, was that although Canadian Jews continue to be disproportionately victimized in hate crimes, antisemitic attitudes have declined steadily in recent decades, and Statistics Canada and Toronto Police Service data show declines in antisemitic hate crimes. http://ijvcanada.org/racism/new-antisemitism/in-defence-of-jenny-pe...

Even Neo-Con David Frum stated on TVO: “It has never been an easy destiny to be a Jew, but… in North America in this day and age it is probably easier than it has ever been for any generation of Jews anywhere in history.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgwGLteyXcY )

Mr. Ross writes: “Then again, far be it for someone like Blakeney, who alludes to "Israeli genocide', to recognize a real genocide when history provides the example.”

Firstly, I take the utmost offence at the imputation that I do not recognize the genocidal acts of the Nazis against Gypsies, Communists, Jews, Homosexuals and others. As someone who has toured the death camps of Poland and who has visited memorials in Israel I am fully aware of the Nazi assault on European Jewry.

My awareness of what happened in 1930s and 1940s Europe motivates me as an anti-racist and devout anti-fascist. I also acknowledge other genocides and agree with former BBC journalist Alan Hart’s observation that

“the holocaust experience – being victims of genocide – is not a uniquely Jewish one.” [Alan Hart, Zionism The Real Enemy of the Jews, Vol 1. (Atlanta: Cla...].

Thus I acknowledge the Armenian genocide, the Congolese genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and indeed the genocidal collective punishments being meted out by Israel against the Palestinian people.

If Mr. Ross had bothered to read Ms. Peto’s thesis he would have seen that far from denying the Nazi holocaust, Ms. Peto was seeking to uphold the memory of those who were martyred in WWII by questioning the exploitation of the memory of such martyrs by those who have a political and ideological agenda which enables the ghettoization and genocide of certain Semitic peoples.

I have come to the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians based, partly, on my reading of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was a fruit of the labour of Raphael Lemkin – a Polish Jew who, after witnessing the Nazi assault on European Jewry, recognized the need to coin a new phrase "genocide" to describe a crime of such a magnitude.

Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in International Law, has described the Israeli government’s policy towards the Palestinian people as “slow motion genocide.” [Francis Boyle, Breaking All The Rules: Palestine, Iraq, Iran, and the Case for Imp...(Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2008), 75]. Does Mr. Ross have any legal analyses to refute Professor Boyle’s conclusion?

Mr. Ross seeks to brandish me as an anti-Semite. Yet in the piece he quotes me from I criticize and condemn Ms. Urback’s dissemination of an anti-Semitic quotation which she concocted and then attempted to associate with Ms. Peto’s antiracist scholarship. Mr. Ross defends Ms. Urback's article in which she invented the following slur against Jews

“I’m onto you, you rich Jews. You’re using the Holocaust to deny your privileged status and pursue your Zionist exploits!”

Thus, it is Mr. Ross who is defending those who disseminate anti-Semitic slogans and it is me who is standing up for all humans who are victims of racism and genocide. Please read my response to Urback’s article. Readers should note Mr. Ross’s selective quotation which is intended to tarnish me as an anti-Semite.

Joshua Blakeney wrote in response to Ms. Urback's article:

Where is the evidence that Jennifer Peto’s well researched and highly informative thesis is “stirring up students and educators around the country”? Is it not the case that nobody – other than those who are criticized by Peto – would be troubled by this thesis if it wasn’t for right wing media hacks making an issue of it? Even now such apologists for Israeli genocide have made national news of Peto’s thesis I think most educators and students support freedom of expression and would find Peto’s thesis reasonable and well researched if they were to read it. Urback writes: ” “I’m onto you, you rich Jews. You’re using the Holocaust to deny your privileged status and pursue your Zionist exploits!” Actually, that language isn’t far from what Peto uses in her paper.” Please provide one example from Peto’s thesis where she comes close to employing such flippant rhetoric? Urback denies her readers the information that Peto is careful not to refer to “Jews” generically but to the subset of (North American) Ashkenazi Jews. Indeed chapter 1 is entitled “Ashkenazi Jews and Whiteness”.

One can’t help wondering how such bigoted language came into the head of Urback if not from Peto’s paper. Peto does cite the testimonials of those who have been on MOL and MRH. Peto writes: “I acknowledge the limitations of this approach because organizers control the website and thus only certain testimonials are available. I still consider this a reliable source of data because my goal is to understand the intended effects of the trips; analyzing the testimonials that organizers consider to be success stories helps expose what they see as a desired outcome.” So if anything Peto’s research is more objective than if she had been given all the raw data to selectively quote herself. She gives those hegemons she critiques the benefit of choosing their most favourable quotations. Conversely, Urback claims to have interviewed someone who participated in the MOL. Yet Urback, unlike Peto, provides no source for us to see if the words she cites are true or false, accurate or inaccurate, invented or documented. Urback repeatedly accuses Peto of positing “unsubstantiated claims,” yet she provides little substantiation for her own claims. Urback fails to demonstrate that Peto lacks substantiation in her arguments. Readers should canvass Peto’s lengthy bibliography and citations to appraise how “unsubstantiated” her claims are.

Like her smear and disinformation about my MA thesis – cited in this article as “nonsensical of pursuits” – Urback seeks to send a message to future students and scholars that certain scholarly investigations are heretical and should be avoided. The word “fatwah” keeps coming to mind. Urback – who I suspect is only a high school graduate – should stop pontificating about what constitutes academic standards in Canadian graduate schools. Obviously in both Peto and my cases we have several academics scrutinizing our work. Such professors, not the demagogues at Macleans or the National Post, are the ones who should decide what credible MA theses look like. Urback should take some 101 classes in Critical Thinking. She might learn that inventing anti-Semitic quotes (not all Jews are rich) and then associating such comments with a careful scholar’s anti-racist scholarship is below academic standards. Likewise, making unsubstantiated claims about a scholars supposed “unsubstantiated claims” is not a well known methodology for debunking those one disagrees with. If Urback wants to be a rhetorician and right-wing media hack then I have no problem with that. But please could she be published away from a blog which purports to care about Canadian campuses.