The Reference List
Any book that suggests it is myth-breaking and fact-telling needs to show that it is based upon facts. Where do we find facts? Well, we should find facts in academic articles and books that were peer-reviewed before they were published or in primary sources, such as government documents. Newspaper articles are not adequate sources. Hammond cites the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Daily Beast, BBC, Haaretz and The Washington Post; anything he states based on articles from these sources cannot be taken seriously.
He refers often to his own blog posts, articles that he wrote for the Foreign Policy Journal (for which he is editor), and two books that he wrote,Obstacle to Peace and The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination. Since these are likely not peer-reviewed, they are not serious resources. Likewise, quoting anti-Israeli organizations, such as Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence and BADIL (an organization based in the Palestinian Authority) do not provide legitimate bases for myth-breaking or fact-finding.
And citing anti-Israeli writers, such as Avi Shavit and Noam Chomsky, does not add to any academic standard Hammond may have been trying to achieve. Shavit’s book, My Promised Land, has been debunked as a
vicious anti-Israeli tome with no documentation at all. I have not read it myself, so take this with a grain of salt until you can check it out for yourself. Noam Chomsky’s book,
Fateful Triangle, of which I do have a copy, relies so predominantly on newspaper articles as sources as to render it no better than an opinion piece in The New York Times or a study of contemporary media impressions rather than a historical analysis of what actually happened (keep in mind that the book was published in 1999). In fact, given that Chomsky is a linguist, he may have been more within his area of expertise had he chosen to make a study of contemporary media reports rather than take on the topic as if he was an historian.
There are other secondary sources used by Hammond, but if 50% of what he relied upon is unreliable then it kind-of throws his entire piece off the we-can-take-these-works-seriously shelf and I feel no need to check out everything. I can, though, if you want . . . just let me know and I will write a book exposing the anti-zionist hoax that this work really is.
(full article online )
Exposing A Zionist Hoax: Exposing an Anti-Zionist Hoax | Israel Diaries