The Horowitz piece is full of the sorts of minor factual errors that one might expect from something cobbled together from a Google search. But here are some of the more interesting things in the bit about me:

Two manifest errors: "There is no historical basis for Professor Holstun’s statement" that Zionists drove 700,000 Palestinians from their homes (220). In response to my claim that the Zionist Plan D "systematically drove 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their villages," the author says, "The claim is pure invention" (221).

No sources are offered for these arguments, or rather, mere contradictions. Every reputable historian working in the field, Palestinian, Israeli, or neither, from Walid Khalidi to Avi Shlaim to Benny Morris to former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, acknowledges the truth of the expulsion, even though they respond to it in different ways, with some of them deploring it, some of them regretting it, and some of them viewing it as a harsh necessity. The fact of the expulsion of 700-750,000 Palestinians in the Nakba is no more controversial among historians than is the fact of the murder of 5,100,000-6,500,000 Jews in the Shoah.

In the original FrontPage Magazine column, on which this was based, Mr. Horowitz provides a discussion board on which one of his readers proposed I should be kicked to death.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/commentdetail.asp?ID=18416&commentID=566225.

Scott McLemee talked about this a bit in his piece on Horowitz. http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/02/22/node_35635. Interesting that Horowitz would have a discussion site titled "Go Postal," then express surprise that one of his readers writes in and proposes going postal.

Finally, all this is a sideshow, however, and leads to unbecoming preening on the part of those who made the list. Horowitz’s attack is a continuation of the anti-PC crusade of fifteen years ago, which has helped to produce an unprecedented defunding of public education in this country. Students might well want to spend less time worrying about (mostly non-existent) professorial enormities, and more time asking why they have to work forty hours a week while taking a full course load and taking out loans.

James Holstun

Professor of English

SUNY Buffalo