Rafael Medoff
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Rafael Medoff is a director at The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. Medoff received his PhD form Yeshiva University in 1991. Rafael Medoff has made a significant contribution to the history of US-Israel relations by examining American Jewish attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Palestinian Arabs. Medoff's work of history has contemporary ramifications in light of the continued prominence of the Israeli-Arab conflict. [1]
Medoff has accused the U.S. State Department of "downpaying" official anti-Semitism in the Arab world just as the State Department downplayed official German anti-Semitism in the 1930's. [2] [3]
In "The Deafening Silence," Medoff argues that had American Jewish leaders been more forceful in presenting thie case for rescue of European Jews to the Roosevelt administration, they could have moved the administration to act. In her review of Holocaust literature, Deborah Lipstadt engages Medoff's argument, but concludes that " There is nothing on record to indicate
that their outspoken support would have changed the mind of restrictionist
legislators." [4]
Anti-Zionist historian Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University, cites Medoff's assertion in "Zionism and the Arabs: An American Jewish Dilemma, 1898-1948," that Zionists did not see the palestinian Arabs as "a distinct national group with national rights-largely because the Palestinian Arabs themselves did not claim the status of a specific national grouping," to argue against Zionism on the gorunds that " no one ruled against self- determination in other parts of Greater Syria where the same views prevailed." [5]
Books
- Blowing the Whistle on Genocide: Josiah E. DuBois, Jr and the Struggle for an American Response to the Holocaust (forthcoming)
- A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust, with David S. Wyman (The New Press, 2002)
- Zionism and the Arabs: An American Jewish Dilemma, 1898-1948, 1997, Greenwood Publishing Group
- Baksheesh Diplomacy: Secret Negotiations Between American Jewish Leaders and Arab Officials on the Eve of World War II, 2001, Lexington Books
- Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement,University of Alabama Press, 2002
- The Deafening Silence: American Jewish Leaders and the Holocaust (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1987)
Publications
- Recent Trends in the Historiography of Zionism: A Review Essay, Judaism, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 95-101
References
- ^ http://www.wymaninstitute.org/about/
- ^ “Sacrificing Adjectives” - from the Holocaust to North Korea, Connecticut Jewish Ledger, March 13, 2008
- ^ http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Y2ZmMmNhMTU0NjQyZDk1YTZhM2EwM2UxZWNiYzRhZmE=
- ^ America and the Holocaust, by Deborah E. Lipstadt Modern Judaism, Vol. 10, No. 3, Review of Developments in Modern Jewish Studies, Part 1 (Oct., 1990), pp. 283-296
- ^ The past as Prelude: Zionism and the Betrayal of American Democratic Principles, 1917-48, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, (Spring, 2002), pp. 21-35
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