Julien Benda’s “Trahison Des Clercs” Recovering leftist scholar Ron Radosh calls the new anti-Israel petition signed by hundreds of anti-Israel historians in the U.S., with an added list of “international” fellow travelers, “Historians for Hamas.” I recognized only about ten names, but I’m no longer really plugged into the organized profession, and I’m sure the signers are representative of a broader swathe of opinion. My alma mater, UCLA, is a hotbed more than Berkeley, including a professor on my dissertation committee. I would guestimate that 10 percent are African American, 30 percent are Arab or Muslim, and 40 percent are Jews who hate Israel. Radosh correctly calls this a modern-day case of what Julien Benda in the 1930s called the “trahison des clercs”—the betrayal by totalitarian-leaning intellectuals who go beyond criticism of Israel to apologize for Hamas as soul brothers, though without the honesty to admit it. See Radosh at http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2014/08/22/bien-pensant-historians/?singlepage=true, and the petition at http://historiansagainstwar.org/gazapetition.html