PAIJ Patrol, Courtesy of SOAS and the FT

It’s a delicious sport well known to editors at the Groan, the Indy and the New Hatesman: find someone with an unmistakably Jewish-sounding surname to say over-the-top-nasty things about Israel for publication. Whatever these people say must be true because, hey, they’re Jewish! Not that we’d ever be so crass as to point that out, obviously. It doesn’t matter to us! Of course not! (But it does shield our courageous writer against the inevitable charges of anti-Semitism.)

Looks like the FT’s got the hang of this game, too.

It’s not hard to play. First, find a good source of people who are falling over themselves to say over-the-top-nasty things about Israel. Hmm, let’s see…. SOAS! Yes! Even a place like LSE is practically a nest of greater-Israel-Zionism compared to SOAS! Then you just need to scroll through the names… let’s see… Sands… Shepherd… Siegman! Bingo! Henry, your turn to have a go at Israel today — knock yaself out!

And Siegman had a go alright. The failure to withdraw from the West Bank — Israel’s fault. No mention of the fact that Olmert was elected by a majority of Israelis to do precisely that, but then was prevented from doing so by Iran, who, with rocket attacks from South Lebanon (via Hizbollah) and the Gaza Strip (via Hamas) after Israel withdrew from the latter, ensured that further withdrawal from Palestinian territories would become utterly impossible.

But Siegman doesn’t stop there; he goes for the nuclear button: Apartheid state! Again, no intelligent discussion or analysis of this at all. He speaks of treating “citizens” unequally but provides not one ink-molecule of substantiation. Does he really mean citizens? If so, he ought to produce at least one example of where Israeli law provides for differing treatment respectively of, say, Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. Or is he really talking about West Bank residents who don’t have Israeli citizenship? We’ll never know because this isn’t what actually matters to Siegman. What matters to him is that his little specialty line of business — as-a-Jew Israel bashing — has netted him another piece in another prestigious (relatively) publication. He’s a reasonably successful PAIJ.