There has been considerable pushback from many in the chattering classes–and some public officials, like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg–to those who have stood up to the BDS campaign against Israel. As I wrote earlier in the week, the mayor thinks we should pipe down when it comes to complaints about Brooklyn College or other institutions of higher learning hosting conferences devoted to supporting the effort to wage economic war on the State of Israel. Others have denigrated the position we’ve taken, on the necessity for Jewish groups to refuse to work together or co-sponsor events with BDS campaigners, as both intolerant and extremist. But this issue is not about academic freedom or the Jewish establishment repressing idealistic dissent against unpopular policies of the Israeli government. It is about hate speech and anti-Semitism.
That is a hard sell for many American Jews who think anti-Semites only come in one package. They think anti-Semites are only neo-Nazi troglodytes or conservative Christians (a terrible slander since the overwhelming majority of evangelicals and other conservative Christians in this country are fervent supporters of Israel and friends of the Jewish people). They refuse to believe that academics and students that couch their rhetoric in the language of human rights and the cause of the downtrodden and oppressed Palestinian people are acting from prejudice and promoting hatred. But they are wrong. And it is nice to know that the American group that is tasked with the responsibility of monitoring anti-Semitism is willing to say so. That’s why we must applaud the Anti-Defamation League for its ad in today’s New York Times refuting Bloomberg and calling the BDS movement by its right name. The ad, an essay by ADL national director Abraham Foxman, framed the issue in the same manner as I have done here at Contentions:
The BDS movement is not merely advocating boycotts of Israel, which in our mind is hateful on its own, but in its support for the “right of return” of refugees, they are advocating something even more hateful, the destruction of the Jewish state through demography. Anyone who is serious about the survival of Israel knows what this is about.
So we are talking here about hate, not mere criticism. The BDS movement at its very core is anti-Semitic.
Many American Jews purport to disagree with the policies of Israel’s government. But most of those who adopt this position have a rather shaky understanding of why it is most Israelis believe the Palestinians have no interest in making peace. But when the argument stops being about how Israel should be governed and becomes one centered on whether the Jews have a right to a state or to defend it, that goes beyond legitimate dissent and becomes part of an effort to deny Jews rights that are accorded every other people and nation.
In the case of Brooklyn College, Foxman is exactly right when he says that BDS supporters have a right to expound their hateful views just as members of the Ku Klux Klan (the same analogy I made here on Wednesday) cannot be prevented from articulating their views. But they do not have a right to expect public universities supported by the taxpayers, as is the case with Brooklyn College, to subsidize their efforts or to offer them a platform, let alone give them the stamp of legitimacy that such an event provides. Bloomberg would not use the police to stop the KKK from speaking at a forum they paid for in his city, but he would not tolerate a Klan conference at Brooklyn College for a minute. Nor would he tell African Americans who protested such an event to “go to North Korea,” as he did those Jews who spoke up about the BDS event.
The distinction made by some between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is a distinction without a difference. Denying rights to Jews to have their own state and to defend it, and seeking to destroy it by the means of economic warfare proposed by the BDS crowd, is fundamentally prejudicial since it sets up a double standard applied to no other country or people in the world. Contrary to the narrative of the BDS advocates, justice is not on the side of those who wish to destroy Israel or to support Palestinian efforts led by the Fatah and Hamas terrorist groups to wage war on it.
This is a simple truth that must be understood by all those who wish to give a pass to the BDS campaign or to try to see it as merely a disagreement about settlements or where Israel’s borders should be placed. As with racism directed at African Americans, a line must be drawn in the sand between persons of conscience and those seeking to boycott, disinvest and sanction the one Jewish state in the world.
That is why there can be no compromise with BDS or its supporters. The litmus test here is not about Benjamin Netanyahu but the survival of the Jewish people and their state. Those who oppose the existence of the latter may not act the part of traditional anti-Semites, but their cause is just as much rooted in bias as those articulated by neo-Nazis.
the hypocrite Barghouti received his master's degree from Tel Aviv University. "Free Speech" advocates? ironic that the press was barred.
Bloomberg is an ass. A rich and opinionated horse's ass.
Brooklyn College students sitting there peacefully, not doing anything to disrupt the on-campus event sponsored by the school's political science department, are removed by school security under the watchful guise (direction?) of a school official?! It sounds like grounds for a lawsuit, one that should definitely be pursued.
BDS is based on a false assumption. nI hope Brooklyn College alum Schumer is having a sleepless weekend, counting snowflakes.
Wrongful discrimination against peaceful attendees, enforced by college hirelings under the eyes of a high-ranking official, is clearly actionable. Sue the bastids. From all reports, the pro-Israeli students were not disrupting, not shouting down speakers, not assaulting BDSers – i.e., they were eschewing the normal Brown Shirt tactics of the left. Brooklyn College should not be allowed the usual smoke and mirrors of an "internal investigation;" BC and the (ir)responsible individuals need to be haled into court, along with the SJP, and made to pay heavily.
Here's an idea for the all the freshly scrubbed matriculates – counter boycott. Stop attending that fascist farm in the first place. Put pressure on Jewish academic staff to quit. If then want it to be ethnically cleansed let them start now. Let them recruit all new students and hire all new staff who can do whatever they like – let their Hamas and Swastika flag fly. And then let Mayor McCheese Bloomberg defend that.
BDS means what?
Not sure what you mean when you ask, "How did it come to this?" Are you asking how it is that the event was ever programmed and put on, or how did it come to anti-BDS BC students being expelled though they weren't being disruptive? n nAs to the differences between the Tabletmag. version and the Daily Beast one, it seems to me the first question to be asked is whether that is what that BC senior and member of Hille, Michael Ziegler, l in fact told Natalie Schachar, Tabletmag's reporter. It seems highly improbable that Schachar fabricated the quote, because there would be no great gain in it for her and she would almost certainly be exposed as dishonest, and quickly. So what is the likelihood that Ziegler made it up? It seems only a little less likely than that the reporter made it up. n nThat brings us to Gail Sheehy and her account. Was she present throughout the entire event and in a position to see security escorting people out, if that did happen? It sounds as though she was present, since she comments on the mix in attendance and says she asked Barghouti a question, presumably during the course of the "public" event rather than sometime before or after it. n n(Sheehy would be more credible if she were neutral rather than as partisan as she was, making clear who she favored and who she disfavored, and effectively editorializing rather than strictly sticking to reporting.)
after reading Sheehy's post, what I meant when I wrote "How did it come to this?" nis how did it become so blithely acceptable to support the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. n nok, I know the answer(s), but still breaking my heart. n nTonight's episode of CBS' "Blue Bloods" is titled "Men in Black", about 'the death of an Hasidic Grand Rebbe'. nI am not observant, but find the intensity of opinion about Israel tends to correlate with discomfort/hostility with Hasidic Jews. n nA few years ago, I thought about relocating Israel to New York – because of the eternal refusal of islam to ever stop the wars – but now I think Vermont and Michigan would start shooting missiles… n
How did it become so blithely acceptable to support the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state? Poco a poco, that is step by step, or incrementally. And what is so incredible and dismaying is that among the greatest non-Arabs contributors to that end have been Jews(!) and "progressives." It has been hugely helpful to these people to see themselves and be seen by others as "anti-Zionists" rather than old-fashioned "antisemites," though they are functionally antisemites. And most amazing and dispiriting of all, at least to me, is that 9/11 and all that the Islamofascists have been responsible for over the past 15 or so years did not result in greater support for Israel. n nAbout Sheehy's Daily Beast post I can't say too much because I only skimmed it looking for the "facts." But she seemed almost giddy about the support she saw for BDS.
If Sheehy can describe Israel as apartheid, she is either willfully ignorant or a deliberate liar.
Did Sheehy "describe Israel as apartheid," or was she just reporting the contentions of the speakers? The wording is somewhat loose, but I don't think you could say without fear of contradiction that on the basis of this article that she herself does believe Israel practices "apartheid." (Has she made her personal views of the I-P conflict clear elsewhere?)
That is understatement when you say that Alterman is "hardly a rabid pro-Zionist" but he looks like one in comparison to the rest of The Nation crew. He has been a harsh critic of Israel for a long time, but he has on a few occasions gainsayed Israel's Leftist enemie, and when he has done that, they swarm him in the way hardcore Leftist are practiced at. (See Alterman's exchange in The Nation between him and the detestable Phyllis Bennis of the IPS after she wrote an editorial that championed Hamas over Israel.)
Too bad Alterman didn't start, "The second, far more difficult question raised by the controversy was what should one’s position be with regard to BDS itself, and by extension, the political science department’s decision to lend legitimacy to a talk at which its arguments would be presented without opposition or clarification from its opponents." What followed from there onward was pretty good. But Alterman didn't, instead he started by accusing all of those opposing the event, especially the "sponsorship"/"endorsement" by the political science department, as being enemies of "free speech" and "academic freedom." n nWhat did the political science department mean to say through their "co-sponsorship" of this along with Students for Justice in Palestine? SJP didn't need that co-sponsorship (and "endorsement") to hold the event there at Brooklyn College did they? Would the political science department co-sponsor an anti-BDS event now, proving up their claim that they were promoting debate in the spirit of academic freedom, not weighing in to support the BDS movement? It is good that other departments declined the poly sci chair's appeal to them to join his department as additional "co-sponsors." n