By Gilad Atzmon

In the last few years we have been witnessing the emergence of a self-gratifying populist culture in the midst of the Palestinian scholarly discourse. Two years ago we watched Ali Abunimah's lecture about ‘culture’ and politics setting a new record of intellectual ignorance.  We then came across  ‘anti’ racist Israel boycott campaigner Omar Barghouti preaching in favour of  biological determinism. This week I came across Columbia Professor Joseph Massad’s Last of the Semites, a talk on Zionism and anti-semitsm the Professor delivered in Stuttgart last month. Unfortunately Massad repeats the exact same pattern.

Watch Massad's Lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqtnY3aYuOo

Let’s us examine  some of Massad’s ideas. Towards the end of his talk Massad concludes that  “whereas Israel insists that European Jews do not belong in Europe and must come to Palestine, the Palestinians have always insisted that the homelands of European Jews were their European countries and not Palestine.” Nice set-up of conflicting views but made up out of whole cloth by Massad.  I can’t think of any Palestinian, including Massad himself, who has been brave enough to boldly suggest to Europeans Jews where they really belong. In fact, the only person who was courageous enough to express such a simple and truthful idea was American hero Helen Thomas. So the next question to ask is who are the ‘Palestinians’ Massad has in mind? Do they exist outside of his solipsistic universe?