Michael Dahan
Reader comment on item: Middle East Studies on Trial

Submitted by U.Silber (United States), Oct 1, 2004 at 20:50

This Dahan is a strange bird. He's one of those characters who never find themselves around the center of the spectrum. He was a Kahanist in New York. After making aliyah in '82 he went went on to an undistinguished army stint and then attend Bar Ilan and Hebrew U. It was at the latter that he began to drift slowly leftward. While at Hebrew U he was a member of campus Likud (Gilad i think it is called), surrounded by legions of Israeli lefties. However, he rapidly lurched to the left and then far left after the Rabin assassination.

Over the past four bloody years of Arafat's war of destruction against Israel, and with the realization of Arafat's true motives through the nineties, most Israeli Jews have shifted to the right. Yet he has established himself as a loud voice on the tiny but noisy fringe left in Israel. He has been a harsh critic of israel, assuming only the worse of Israeli motives and actions, while always giving Palestinian Arabs the benefit of the doubt.

He writes a column with a certain Sam Bahour, an American Arab living in Ramallah. The column appears in various leftist websites. And while he might deny this, his views have evolved beyond the Israeli left, and into anti-Zionism or even self hate. He is beyond Ze'ev Shternhall. He might even be a Chomsky-ite. The spilled blood of his brothers and sisters doesn't even seem to bother him. Case in point: 2 1/2 years ago, during February and the very harsh March of 2002, as Palestinian Arab terrorists exploded in Israel's streets leaving hundreds of Jews dead and thousands forever maimed, Dahan would pen articles with titles such as "the end of the occupation?".

And this is a yeshiva boy.

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