Juan Cole's not so "Informed Comment"

In a post dated 4/26 Juan Cole comments on Israeli UN Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman's denouncing of Hizballah. Cole writes:

"Gillerman called Hizbullah, an Arab party, "animals" in summer of 2006. Would he like to expand the reference to include other races? How many of us exactly are Untermenschen in his view? For Likudniks to call Jimmy Carter a "bigot" is sort of like the Ku Klux Klan denouncing Nelson Mandela for racial insensitivity.

Now one of Cole's readers responded to him and said,

"Juan Cole misquotes Israel's UN Ambassador, Dan Gillerman.

He said "Hezbollah" not "Arabs."

Here is his exact quote: "Why do you only address the Israeli bombings in Lebanon and not the shelling of our cities? Why don't you talk about the fact that those ruthless, indiscriminate animals yesterday targeted the holiest city, one of the holiest places to Christianity? Nazareth!"

To which our "informed" Juan says:

Yeah, I think you would find Hizbullah, those "animals" in Gillerman's terms, would be Arabs.

So Juan Cole, who spends countless Blog posts telling us that criticizing Israel and Zionism is NOT anti-semitic, even going so far as to say that a holocaust denier like Mahmoud Ahmedinajad (who said of Israelis, 'Are they human beings? 'They are like cattle, nay, more misguided.' A bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians.') was not Anti-semitic now tells us that to call Hizballah animals is racist because "Hizballah are Arabs." I'm guessing logic isn't Prof. Cole's strong point.

If that wasn't hypocritical enough, Gillerman's strong denouncement of Hizballah was in response to the shelling of the city of Nazareth - which anyone who is "informed" would know, is an ARAB city inside of Israel. Looks like "Informed Comment" isn't so informed after all.