Not responding

Several have asked me whether I will respond to Gilbert Achcar's responses to my reviews.  Here is my answer.  I wrote what I think was a fair review of his book on Arabs and the Holocaust: I even offered praise about some aspects of the book.  But while I relish an intellectual or political debate or even polemical wars more than anyone, there is a sure way to get me to pull out of a debate: when the other side resorts to insults, vulgarities, childish name calling and pettiness.  Achcar did exactly that.  I mean, how can I argue with someone who insists (in English) that I have not read his book (despite the many specific references in my review), and who insists (in Arabic) that I have not read any of the Arabic books I cited (and that he has read them although he never cited them in his book)?  Achcar reveals himself to be way too arrogant, self-righteous, and thin skinned to warrant a debate with him--at his level of insults and name calling.  I mean, he is so stubborn that he insists that Ihsan `Abdul-Quddus was a leftist; or that Hazim Saghiyyah had not become a right-winger back in 1997 (when the late Lebanese communist thinker, wrote a biting criticisms of him back in the mid-1980s); or when he insists that we should not dismiss the writings of Bayan Nuwayhid Al-Hut although she has cited the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (he here insists that I have read only one book by her but not the others).  Furthermore, Achcar reveals himself to harbor that most annoying Lebanonese streak that I have consistently mocked: the obsession with ranks and prestige.  Here is how he started his response to me in Arabic: he said that he has lectured recently: "in five of the most important universities in California" and then adds that he has lectured in "ten of the most prominent of American universities".   This part of his response has been widely mocked by readers on Facebook and even on Al-Akhbar Arabic site.  You want me to respond to that, really?