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Nimni is an interesting bird; an Argentine Jewish transplant to Australia by way of Israel, and later an occupier of Belfast. He sees nothing wrong with his moving to a land stolen from the indigenous aborigines, supplanted by a white felon population. At the same time, he denounces Israel for existing on land that he thinks should be handed over to the Arabs. In the past, he made the incredible assertion that “the PLO's pragmatism and willingness to compromise were in sharp contrast to the ‘extremist intransigence’ of the Israeli government." And now he occupies the poor hapless North Irish.
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Nimni has even claimed that Herr Ahmadinejad in Iran is not anti-Semitic (and if Nimni does not think HE is, then surely he can find no one else on earth who is either!). Here’s how he excuses the Iranian thug’s anti-Semitism, written on Haifa University’s Alef chat for Neo-Nazis and anti-Semites… We love Nimni’s invocation of Said’s theory that Europeans are incapable of understanding the Middle East, except how come he thinks he is exempt?

Queen’s University, Belfast (formerly University of New South Wales) Ephraim Nimni has his “Post-Zionist” head stuck down under

By Lee Kaplan, www.IsraCampus.org.il
14/7/2010

Ephraim Nimni (whose name rhymes with ninny) hates Israel. As an Israeli expatriate, he has made a career out of bashing Israel and promoting Marxist ideology as a theology.

Nimni had been until 2007 a senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Today he is a Reader (Assistant Professor – sounds to us like a demotion!) at the School of Politics and International Studies in Belfast, Northern Ireland where he lectures on “Post-Zionism,” something whose charms he discovered while lecturing in Australia.

He also is typical of what one finds in the “groupthink” crowd of Marxist professors. You see, to Ephraim Nimni, the biggest anti-Semites are not anti-Semitic at all. Instead it is Israel that causes all the problems in the Middle East by, well, just existing as a Jewish state. Since Marxism is supposed to be opposed to the “polarization of nationalism,” according to Nimni, he signed a petition with fellow communists endorsing the Arab “right of return,” to flood Israel with Arabs and dismantle the Jewish state.

Nimni recently signed a petition, together with lots of fellow Marxies, castigating Israel for defending itself during Operation Cast Lead. Today he teaches “conflict resolution” and other trendy things. He insists that a Jewish state existing in Israel is the heart of the Middle East problem with the Arabs. He denounces “Zionism” and the only conflict resolution he can imagine involves eliminating Zionism.

Nimni seems to think of himself as a sort of expert on “post-Zionism,” calling it both a “term of hope, but also of abuse in contemporary Israeli politics, and it looms large in debates about the aims, character and future of the Israeli state. The debate about the importance or triviality of post- Zionism is iconoclastic, comprehensive, bitter, subversive of cherished beliefs, collective memories and emotions, and not lacking in vilification and ad hominem attacks.” As is well known, anti-Israel Marxists never engage in ad hominem attacks.

In writing in the academic online E Journals, Nimni has cited as an example of an egregious ad hominem assault on post-Zionism, “ a spurious allegation of unprofessional behaviour… an attempt to dismiss one of our contributors, Professor Ilan Pappe, from Haifa University, one of the best-known advocates of post-Zionism.”

Spurious? Pappe is a certified serial liar. This was proven in Israeli court, when veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade sued for libel one of Pappe’s students for the MA thesis he composed under Pappe. The student admitted on the stand that he fabricated a massacre of Arabs in the village of Tantura outside Haifa in 1948. It was all paid for by the PLO. Like Nimni, Pappe resides and “teaches” in the British Diaspora.

Nimni further explains post-Zionism as an idea that “paradoxically tackles, with unusual clarity and vigor, the tensions and difficulties in the question whether Israel should be a Jewish or a democratic state, and the actual and potential contradictions in pursuing these two goals at once. In doing so, the debate undermines and denounces what it calls soziologia meguyeset, sociology (and by extension, political science) drafted into providing intellectual and academic support to the official narrative of the Zionist movement.” He continues, “While the Zionist movement has some unusual characteristics in the well rehearsed pattern of development of nationalist movements, namely dedicated organic intellectuals that act as a transmission belt of its hegemonic ideology (Gramsci, 1976), it has also shown a most remarkable ability to cover its own weaknesses by recourse to hasbarah, a sophisticated mechanism of lobbying and public relations capable of mobilizing significant sections of the Jewish intelligentsia in the service of the nationalist cause at home and abroad.” Gramsci, for those who do not know him, was an Italian Stalinist.

Hmmm…Would that “Jewish intelligentsia in the service of the nationalist cause at home and abroad” possibly be us here at Isracampus? We sure hope so.

Nimni has even claimed that Herr Ahmadinejad in Iran is not anti-Semitic (and if Nimni does not think HE is, then surely he can find no one else on earth who is either!). Here’s how he excuses the Iranian thug’s anti-Semitism, written on Haifa University’s Alef chat for Neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, attacking another hater of Israel on the list. It is so remarkable that we bring it to you in full:

“But to accuse Ahmadinejad of anti-Semitism is to fall into the inverted mirror image of Ahmadinejad third worldism (sic), a deep Eurocentrism that only knows to judge the world in terms of European categories and remains blissfully ignorant of non European circumstances, logics or categories of thought. In this regard, Brian Klug appears to exhibit the Orientalist thinking so eloquently denounced by Edward Said. Apart from ignoring that the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel lives voluntarily under Ahmadinejad’s sovereignty, Klug appears to ignore that Ahmadinejad’s extreme language is addressed to Israel and not to Jews. His Holocaust conference was an act of crass ignorance, not anti-Semitism. He falls neatly into the category that Joseph Massad calls Zionist Muslims, and he is an embarrassment to those who support the Palestinian cause. These ‘Zionist Muslims’ deny the Holocaust because they subscribe to the Zionist logic that the Holocaust is the justification for Israel, so they believe that if they deny the Holocaust they will be denying Israel. This is a statement of crass ignorant Third Worldism (sic) but not of (western) Anti-Semitism. Instead of fighting Zionism, Ahmadinejad and his mates end up justifying a Zionist claim. And Brian Klug, in spite of his early perceptive differentiations between criticisms of Israel and anti-Semitism, joins the ranks of the Orientalists and those who use accusations of anti-Semitism to deflect criticisms of Israel.”

Jews in Iran don’t live “voluntarily” under Ahmadinejad and are forbidden to leave. We love Nimni’s invocation of Said’s theory that Europeans are incapable of understanding the Middle East, except how come he thinks he is exempt?

What Nimni ignores, while making his own ad hominem attacks against those with whom he disagrees, is that Israel is a Jewish state and a democracy already. Meanwhile, Nimni drifts from Australia to Northern Ireland and continues to cheer on the enemies of the Jews. He writes: “Post-Zionists respond to this argument by challenging their opponents to show how this goal can be made compatible with liberal democracy, and contend that, sooner rather than later, Israel must choose whether to be democratic or to be Jewish, as, they claim, it cannot be both. In reply, Zionists concede that Jews will have a privileged position in a Jewish state, but argue that this state can nevertheless be democratic and fair to its ethnic minorities.”

Nimni likes to cite the superstars of the anti-Israel movement, notably Ben Gurion University anti-Israel geographer Oren Yiftachel and the late pro-terror communist sociologist Baruch Kimmerling from Hebrew University. Both of them people who made careers out of bashing Israel and supporting its enemies. Nimni even includes among the great mavens of post-Zionism the dead pro-terror Columbia University English lit professor, Edward Said. Seems that no one can do or say anything wrong as long as they are advocates of the end of a Jewish state in Israel.

Here is Nimni on “multiculturalism”:

“The rejoinder of post-Zionists to this objection is that while most nineteenth-century democratic nation-states had a distinguishable ethnic element in their national identity and that, moreover, the circumstances that led to the creation of Zionism in nineteenth century Europe dramatically illustrate the incapacity of territorially dispersed minorities to partake in the ethos and identity of these nation-states, on the threshold of the twenty-first century, with the emergence of multiculturalism and the politics of recognition (Taylor 1994), the demand and clamor is to rectify this glaring and conspicuous injustice.”

Let’s face it, the multiculturalism Nimni is pitching involves cheering on those who cut off people’s heads and commits honor killings of its women.

Nimni is a devoted groupie of anti-Semite Edward Said. He seems to get academic jobs mainly thanks to that. You may recall that Said denounced Arafat for so much as pretending to talk with the Israelis about “peace.”