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7 hours agoThat first article is about as terrible as one comes to expect from the Jerusalem post. I’m not saying there isn’t much to criticize in Arendt’s writings (particularly if your criticism comes from the left) but a Zionist spin article about a prominent anti-Zionist Jewish political scientist (who did admiral work pointing out the Zionist connections to the Nazi death machine) falls pretty flat. And it follows such a traditional Zionist pattern: have you considered that this anti-Zionist Jew is the real racist and this we should not pay attention when she reports on Eichmann’s warm and collaborative relationship with the Zionist partisans that formed the political core of the colony?
Much more nuanced. Doesn’t hit it square on the nose by saying “she was, at base, a liberal bourgeois academic who never fully opened her eyes to it even after nearly being ground in the gears of that system” but basically hints at that. The end of that one even says that you should read her despite her, shall we say, banal liberal racism/orientalism (including, famously, against poor, Eastern European Jews). But the context helps to understand when she is making valid observations and decent (and sometimes controversial) insights and when she misses the mark because of her prejudices.