Editing Israel Shahak (section)

==Death==
Shahak died of diabetes in July 2001 and was buried in [[Giv'at Shaul]] cemetery, Jerusalem.{{sfn|Katzman|2001}} His death was the occasion of tribute and criticism; the [[Bar-Ilan University]] historian Haim Genizi, said that "Shahak's extreme anti-Israeli statements were welcomed by the [[PLO]], and [were] widely circulated in pro–Arab circles", in detriment to the interests of the State of Israel.{{sfn|Genizi|2002|p=94}} [[Gore Vidal]] said Shahak was "the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets",{{sfn|Vidal|2002|p=4}} regarding the influence of religion upon the [[Civil law (legal system)|civil law]] of society. [[Norton Mezvinsky]], said that his friend and collaborator was "a rare intellectual giant and a superior humanist"; in that vein, [[Edward Said]] said that Shahak was "a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity."{{sfn|Mezvinsky|2001}} An obituary in ''Haaretz'' called him "the scourge of nationalists".{{sfn|Katzman|2001}}

[[Christopher Hitchens]] considered Shahak a "dear friend and comrade... [who was] a brilliant and devoted student of the archaeology of Jerusalem and Palestine", who, "during his chairmanship of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate."{{sfn|Hitchens|2001}} [[Alexander Cockburn]], writing in [[Antiwar.com]], described Shahak the intellectual, the "tireless translator and erudite foot-noter... a singular man, an original."{{sfn|Cockburn|2001}} Allan C. Brownfeld, of the [[American Council for Judaism]], recalled a [[Humanism|humanist]] who actively opposed "racism and oppression in any form and in any country"; that Shahak possessed a "genuinely prophetic Jewish voice, one which ardently advocated democracy and human rights."{{sfn|Brownfeld|2001}} In an obituary, the journalist Elfi Pallis called Shahak essentially "an old-fashioned liberal" in principle, thought, and action.{{sfn|Pallis|2001}} Moreover, [[Michel Warschawski]] said that Israel Shahak was "the last Israeli liberal", who was "above all, one of the last philosophers of the eighteenth-century school of enlightenment, rationalism, and liberalism, in the American meaning of the concept."{{sfn|Warschawski|2001}}