As a history of Mandatory Palestine, Segev's book, with its omissions and sleights-of-word, its ill-considered mingling of serious history and human-interest gush, is, at best, misleading. He is not so much an historian as a man with a mission: to overturn all received ideas, even if it means doing violence to the truth. One has only to consider what the British actually did, and did not do, to encourage the Jewish National Home to see how false is his central thesis. Unfortunately, those unfamiliar with the period he covers can hardly be expected to realize just how much has been omitted, elided, or explained away.

For those, however, who do know the history of Mandatory Palestine: Res Ipsa Loquitur. And how.

Peter Lubin is a literary critic, an expert on Vladimir Nabokov, and has also written extensively on the Middle East.

Ruth King

More on Allegra Pacheco

In the November 2000 issue of Outpost, I criticized a young woman named Allegra Pacheco. Israel's most hardened leftists were appalled by the brutal lynching of two Israelis, one of whom was tossed from the second story of a police station to a crowd which hacked him to death. Not so Ms. Pacheco who, on CNN, seized the opportunity to defend the murderers (they were victims of Israeli "atrocities") and call for an international tribunal to try Israel for "human rights violations." We pointed out that Allegra, as "human rights champion," would receive short shrift under the Arab despots and terror chieftains she admires. We have since discovered that Pacheco is a Radcliffe "Peace Fellow," in itself a sad commentary on the depths to which the elite academy has sunk.

We received a letter in defense of Ms. Pacheco signed by seven women. It seemed like a PC parody, and we at AFSI suspected someone was playing a joke on us. But no, the letter--reprinted here in its entirety--was sent in earnest. My response follows.

Dear Ms. King,

We are writing to you in response to your attack on Allegra Pacheco. Allegra speaks for many Jewish women. Additionally, there are many women like Allegra across the USA, in Israel, and many other countries, who support human rights and the rights of one people not to be occupied by another.

We can appreciate people holding different political positions, and their right to do so. We do not want to review point by point your references to Israel. We are concerned about your attack on another woman. We disagree with your analysis, but that is not the point of this letter. What is more important at this moment, is your hateful attack on Allegra and other women who dare to speak out against injustice and violence.

We cannot abide your reference to the violent imagery of rape, flogging and murder that you use in reference to Allegra, were she to be in an Arab country. This is the height of misogyny and an invitation to violence--a particular kind of violence that has been used for centuries to silence women. This statement is inaccurate, based on stereotypes which feed the anti-Arab racism that incites hatred and violence. Your words reflect the types of assaults being perpetrated on the Palestinian people every day by the state of Israel. It is very painful to read these words from another woman.

Sincerely,

Sarah Hershey, Susan Jacoby, Debbie Lubarr, Eleanor Roffman, Ellen Shachter, Barbara Schulman, Dara Silverman

Dear Ladies:

First of all, when you send a letter of complaint, you should identify yourselves. Thinking that perhaps you were well-meaning young ladies misled by your friend's pose as a human rights advocate, I contacted one of you, Eleanor Roffman, to ask what your connection was to Allegra Pacheco. She replied that you were all members of a local group called Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine. So you are not innocent groupies after all, but partners in the infamous struggle to replace the Jewish state with an Arab state (that's what Israel/Palestine means). And if you don't know what the fate of the Jewish inhabitants of Israel/Palestine would be, wilful ignorance is no excuse.

You seem to have as little understanding of feminism as of the Arab-Israel conflict. It is an absurd distortion of feminist principles to assert that one woman has no right to attack another. Tell me, ladies, does that mean Ilse Koch, the beast of Buchenwald, is sacrosanct? Anna Pauker, the Rumanian Communist commissar responsible for the murder of substantial numbers (including her own husband)? Mme. Mao? Tokyo Rose? Indeed, Allegra Pacheco bears striking resemblances to Tokyo Rose. Tokyo Rose was the name U.S. servicemen gave to a woman who broadcast propaganda from Japan during World War II (it turned out several U.S.-born girls took part in these broadcasts). Like Tokyo Rose, Ms. Pacheco has transferred her allegiance to the enemy, in

[(Continued on p.12)]

May 2001               - 11 -               Outpost