As a gratuitously attention-seeking anti-Zionist, Jenny Peto must actually be rather pleased with the response to her graduate thesis, “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education”.

From Macleans on Campus to the National Post to the pages of The Propagandist, Peto’s thesis has been at the centre of a firestorm of criticism and debate.

Not that Peto’s thesis has managed to attract to her the right kind of attention. Rather, her thesis seems to have satisfied very few people in terms of meeting a high standard of academic quality. This should surprise no one; an essay like “The Victimhood of the Powerful” was in no way meant to satisfy such standards. It was merely meant to advance an extreme political agenda.

With its broad focus on issues of “white privilege”, Peto’s argument actually seems to be about grievance-based politics. Moreover, through the theme of “solidarity”, the thesis aims to transplant various grievances related to the topic of “white privilege” shared by western anti-Israel activists to Palestinian homosexuals.

But even more than this, as with...More >>