Praise and Criticism
Howard Sachar sees Karsh is the "preeminent scholar-spokesman of the Revisionist (politically-rightist) Movement in Zionism." Political commentator Daniel Pipes described him as "the preeminent historian of the modern Middle East writing today."
Benny Morris called Karsh's article "a mélange of distortions, half-truths, and plain lies that vividly demonstrates his profound ignorance of both the source material (...) and the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict." Reviewing Fabricating Israeli History, Morris said that Karsh belabors minor points while ignoring the main pieces of evidence.
The political scientist Ian Lustick said Karsh's writing in Fabricating Israeli History was malevolent and his analysis, erratic and sloppy.
Yezid Sayigh, Professor of Middle East Studies, wrote that " is simply not what he makes himself out to be, a trained historian (nor political/social scientist)." Karsh accused Sayigh of a "misleading misrepresentation of my scholarly background" and retorted that Sayigh's remarks were "not a scholarly debate on facts and theses but a character assassination couched in high pseudo-academic rhetoric".
Read more about this topic: Efraim Karsh
Famous quotes containing the words praise and/or criticism:
“Better to die at the hands of fools than to accept praise from them.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)