Martin Kramer tells the story of some Middle Eastern Studies professors whose idea of scholarship is to circulate petitions warning Israel not to do terrible things that it wasn't planning to do in the first place. [click here and scroll to Apr. 25, 2003 entry]. In this case, the hysterical petition is from the self-described "Professors of Conscience" who caution Israel against "full-fledged ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians from "Israel and the Occupied [sic] Territories".

I might be more inclined to believe that these professors were legitimate scholars if they also wrote petitions warning some of Israel's neighbors not to commit equally implausible atrocities. For example, they might also write a letter insisting that Tunisia must never render old ladies into sandwich meat, or that Jordan should agree never to broadcast dwarf-tossing contests on state-controlled television.

Indeed, I might even believe that these professors had a shred of a "conscience" if they spent half as much of the effort condemning Arab countries for actual human rights abuses, as they spend condemning Israel for imaginary ones.