Zionist Hoodlums and the Attacks on Juan Cole; and Hitchens Ate Falafel, and that experience qualified him as a Middle East expert. There is no question that Zionist hoodlums and Middle East war enthusiasts have intensified their war on Juan Cole. Many of them exhibit an obsession with Cole merely because he has, deservedly in my opinion, obtained access to the public sphere and to mainstream media. But there is more: it is all about Palestine and the Palestinians. Many specialists of the Middle East, including many progressives among them, choose for political and career purposes to avoid ever mentioning the Palestinians, and many—I know—refuse to touch on the Arab-Israeli conflict in their courses. I know one professor who after getting a job at a major university decided to not teach a course on the Arab-Israeli conflict, when she/he was asked—that person told me. It is far safe for one’s career in US academia, especially if one has career ambitions and hopes of hierarchical advancement, to avoid ever mentioning Palestine and the Palestinian cause. I know some who vocalize in private, and appear numb in public—they know what they are doing, and this applies to the majority of experts on the Middle East in the US—I did not say all. To his credit, Juan Cole speaks about the Palestinians, and follows it on his blog, and he courageously refuses to be intimidated by the lousy intimidating message that Mayor Guilliani sent after Sep. 11: that one is not permitted to bring in the Palestinian question when discussing Middle East developments. That ambitious Mayor would not mind bringing in Israel and its voracious appetite for conventional and unconventional weapons, or its land aggrandizements. I am sure that he as a presidential candidate will promise to augment Israel’s arsenal of WMDs and will probably promise more wars of “liberation” in the Middle East. I notice that critics of Cole always focus on his writings on the Palestinians: it bothers them that the mentions it and writes about it and finds the issue politically salient. They don’t want his voice in the public sphere. Notice that Zionist hoodlums don’t mention Cole’s criticisms of US policy in Iraq, but focus instead on his writings that relate to Israel. And then there is Hitchens. I have nothing nice to say about this man: I debated him on radio early after his right-wing transformation, or metamorphosis into something more horrific and repulsive than that creature in Kafka, and would really relish another opportunity. But I have hard time reading him these days: he sounds like Michael Ledeen, and is as boring as Ledeen too. Don’t get me wrong: I read people I despise. I subscribed to Midstream magazine as soon as I came to this country, and to Commentary. But Hitchens is a tired and tiresome propagandist for Bush. But Hitchens problem with Cole is of a different nature. You see: Hitchens has been posing for a very long time as a Middle East expert of sorts, although he never studied the Middle East, and never learned any of its languages. And notice that in his latest attack on Cole (who knows Arabic, Persian and Urdu) he engages in arguments over Persian translations. Who are you to judge matters of Persian translations? He does NOT know Persian. Quelle chutzpah?? This is like me offering opinions on translations of Russians. But this is the problem that Hitchens has with Cole: for a very long time, he appeared in the media and threw in a word of Arabic here and there, impressing his interviewers who confuse falafel with lufa. And in my judgement, Hitchens is not even credible on Middle East matters, and I really hope that he stops throwing Edward Said’s name in order to get himself some pro-Palestinian credentials that he does not have, or deserve. One more time Hitchens: I know that you know that Edward Said was not taking your calls when he died. End the charade now, please. But I also cast doubt on some of the claims that Hitchens had made about his Middle East adventures—that was before he wrote those racist travel pieces in Vanity Fair that make Henri Lammens look culturally sensitive by comparison. He, for example, often claimed in the 1980s, that he once interviewed Abu Nidal. I got curious on the matter, and asked people who should know. Nobody, NOBODY, can verify that he ever met Abu Nidal, except Abu Hitchens himself. Now, one person I met in Beirut told me that Hitchens once met a falafel vendor that he mistook for Abu Nidal. I will not, to be very fair to Hitchens here, deny that Hitchens may have during a trip to Beirut met a falafel vendor or two. That is entirely possible, and will not take that away from Hitchens. And notice that Hitchens style of fibs and fabrications on the Middle East always, ALWAYS, includes something along the lines: “and I once saw that with my own eyes in Beirut”—he changes the name of the city as the occasion may require. In this slate piece for example: he claims that he saw a banner in Ba`albak with a particular slogan about Israel that so offended him—and notice that Hitchens like US conservatives and liberals alike gets more offended by anti-Israeli rhetoric than by Israeli killings of Palestinians (and I am not talking here even about the repulsive rhetoric of Ahmadinajad). I used to go regularly to Ba`albak in those days, interviewing many of the leaders at the time, and I never recall seeing that slogan that he puts in quotation, as if he read it in the original Arabic. Did he read that in a book by Michael Ledeen or did he make it up, I wonder. Do you know that Hitchens is the only person on earth who claims that US occupation soldiers in Iraq were greeted with “sweets and flowers” and he of course adds that he “saw that in with his own eyes in…”--name the city as the occasion may require. And those phrases that he disputes are often inventions of Western Zionist propaganda and are not sometimes available in the original Arabic or Persian languages. Zionist invented the pharse “throwing the Jews into the sea” and attributed it to Ahmad Shuqayri, and no person was EVER able to find it, and I read all the man’s books. Zionist propagandists often invent horrific phrases and then attribute them to Arabs and Muslim, to create outrage or to call for wars. And I will not sugarcoat my words here, and I will not preface my remarks by saying that I am not opposed to the state of Israel. I am, and fiercely so, and will always be. Zionist hoodlums don’t want a Middle East expert with language skills in the media: this explains the venom of Hitchens against Cole. With Cole, Hitchens can’t throw the word Baklava to appear as a Middle East hand, and he is not dealing with, say, Paul Findley who he can easily intimidate with the three words of Arabic and Persian that he memorized years ago. Hitchens: select another region. You are fully exposed now. Try covering and traveling in uninhabited lands: no language skills are required there. This is Cole's rebuttal.