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<DIV class=category><A
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<H2>Israel’s War on American Universities</H2>
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<H6 class=date>Posted on Mar 16, 2014</H6>
<P>By <A href="http://www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges/">Chris Hedges</A></P>
<DIV class=article_main_image>
<P><IMG border=0 alt=""
src="http://www.truthdig.com/images/eartothegrounduploads/netanyahuaipac_590.jpg"
width=590 height=342> </P>
<P class=article_main_image_captiondetail><EM>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu speaks to the AIPAC meeting on March 4 in Washington, D.C.
<SMALL><FONT size=2>(AP/Carolyn Kaster)</FONT></SMALL></EM> </P>
<P></P></DIV>
<P>The banning of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Northeastern
University in Boston on March 7, along with a university threat of disciplinary
measures against some of its members, replicates sanctions being imposed against
numerous student Palestinian rights groups across the country. The attacks, and
the disturbingly similar forms of punishment, appear to be part of a coordinated
effort by the Israeli government and the Israel lobby to blacklist all student
groups that challenge the official Israeli narrative.</P>
<P>Northeastern banned the SJP chapter after it posted on campus replicas of
eviction notices that are routinely put up on Palestinian homes set for Israeli
demolition. The university notice of suspension says that if the SJP petitions
for reinstatement next year, “No current member of the Students for Justice in
Palestine executive board may serve on the inaugural board of the new
organization” and that representatives from the organization must attend
university-sanctioned “trainings.” </P>
<P>In 2011 in California, 10 students who had disrupted a speech at UC Irvine by
Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren <A
href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-muslim-students-convicted-20140310,0,2243315.story#ixzz2w3gTWxxQ">were
found guilty</A>, put on informal probation and sentenced to perform community
service. Oren, an Israeli citizen who has since been <A
href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Michael-Oren-joins-CNN-as-analyst-and-contributor-338146">hired
by CNN</A> as a contributor, has <A
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2013/12/congress-blacklist-boycotters.html">called
on Congress</A> to blacklist supporters of the campaign of boycotts, divestment
and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and to prosecute those who protest at
appearances by Israeli officials. Some activists at Florida Atlantic University
were stripped of student leadership positions after walking out of a talk by an
Israeli army officer, and they were ordered by school administrators to attend
re-education seminars designed by the Anti-Defamation League. Columbia Students
for Justice in Palestine (CSJP) was abruptly placed on suspension in the spring
of 2011 and barred from reserving rooms and hosting events on campus. The
university administration, before the ban, had a practice of notifying the
campus <A href="http://www.hillel.org/about/what-is-a-hillel">Hillel</A> in
advance of any CSJP event. The suspension was eventually lifted, after a protest
led by attorneys for the CSJP.</P>
<P></P>
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<P>Max Geller, a law student and a SJP member at Northeastern whom I reached by
phone in Boston, accused the university of responding “to outside pressures,”
including that of alumnus Robert Shillman, who is the CEO of Cognex Corp., and
hedge fund billionaire Seth Klarman, both supporters of right-wing Israeli
causes.</P>
<P></P>
<P>“To prohibit students from holding leadership roles and student groups simply
because they engaged in a peaceful political protest is antithetical to the
university’s mission to educate students,” he said. “It erases any pedagogical
value disciplinary process might seek.”</P>
<P>“In the last year,” Geller went on, “I have received death threats, been
publicly and unfairly maligned, and have been threatened with disciplinary
measures. This has made engaging in speech about an issue about which I care
deeply, both as a Jew and an American, a fear- and anxiety-causing prospect.”
</P>
<P>Israel’s heavy-handed reaction to these campus organizations is symptomatic
of its increasing isolation and concern about waning American support. The
decades-long occupation and seizure of Palestinian land and the massive military
assaults against a defenseless population in Gaza that has left hundreds dead,
along with growing malnutrition among Palestinian children and enforced poverty,
have alienated traditional supporters of Israel, including many young American
Jews. Israel, at the same time, has turned into a pariah in the global
community. If it were to become devoid of American support, which it largely
buys with political campaign contributions funneled through groups such as the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel would be adrift. There
are a growing number of banks and other companies, especially in the European
Union, joining the boycott movement, which refuses to do business with Israeli
concerns in the occupied territories. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
speaking before AIPAC on March 4, surprisingly devoted much of his talk to
attacking the nascent BDS movement, which he said stood for “Bigotry, Dishonesty
and Shame.” He called for BDS supporters to “be treated exactly as we treat any
anti-Semite or bigot.” He warned that “naive and ignorant” people are being
recruited as “gullible fellow travelers” in an anti-Semitic campaign. </P>
<P>Israeli officials are also apparently <A
href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article4001765.ece">attempting
to infiltrate</A> the BDS movement and are using subterfuge to link it to
Islamic extremism, according to The Times of London. The Israeli government in
addition is pushing censorious, anti-democratic bills in the state legislatures
of New York, Maryland and Illinois that would impose financial sanctions on
academic organizations that boycott Israeli institutions. Meanwhile, the United
States and others enthusiastically impose sanctions on Russia for an occupation
that is much less draconian than Israel’s long defiance of international law.
</P>
<P>The ADL-designed indoctrination classes for university activists are,
according to those who have been required to take them, shabby attempts to
equate any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.</P>
<P>“Myself and two other members of SJP were forced to attend the ADL-sponsored
‘diversity training’ course or we would have violated the terms of our probation
and in turn we would be suspended and/or expelled,” said Nadine Aly, a Florida
Atlantic student activist who with other activists walked out of a lecture given
at the university by an Israeli army officer, Col. Bentzi Gruber, who had helped
devise the rules of engagement for <A
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War">Operation Cast Lead</A>, the
horrific attack on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. I reached her by phone at
the Florida campus. “The very idea that the administration is implying that it
is racist to criticize Israeli policy is ludicrous. We were put on ‘indefinite
probation,’ banning us from holding leadership positions in any recognized
student organizations, including student government, at the university until our
graduation. I was stripped of my position as president of SJP as well as a
student senator, and the former vice president of the SJP lost her position as a
Student House representative. It is a shame that this university, like most
universities, bows to the pressure of the Zionist lobby and wealthy Zionist
donors, when they should be protecting the rights of their students.” </P>
<P>The persecution of scholars such as <A
href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/massad.html">Joseph
Massad</A> and <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein">Norman
Finkelstein</A> who challenge the official Israeli narrative has long been a
feature of Israeli intervention in American academic life. And the eagerness of
university presidents to <A
href="http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/12/indiana-wash-u-st-louis-gwu-northwestern-cornell-reject-academic-boycott-of-israel/">denounce</A>
the American Studies Association call for an academic boycott of Israel is a
window into the insatiable hunger for money that seems to govern university
policy. The current effort to shut down student groups, however, raises
traditional Israeli censorship and interference to a new level. Israel seeks now
to openly silence free speech on American college campuses—all of these student
groups have steadfastly engaged in nonviolent protests—and has enlisted our
bankrupt liberal elites and college administrators as thought police. </P>
<P>The failure among academics to stand up for the right of these student groups
to express dissenting views and engage in political activism is a sad commentary
on how irrelevant most academics have become. Where, in this fight, are the
constitutional law professors defending the right to free speech? Where are the
professors of ethics, religion and philosophy reminding students about the right
of all to a dignified life free of oppression? Where are the Middle Eastern
studies professors explaining the historical consequences of Israel’s violent
seizure of Palestinian land? Where are the journalism professors defending the
right of dissidents and victims to a fair hearing in the press? Where are the
professors of queer and gender studies, African-American studies, Native
American studies or Chicano studies acting to protect the voices and dignity of
the marginalized and oppressed?</P>
<P>This assault will not end with groups such as Students for Justice in
Palestine. The refusal to hear the cries of the Palestinian people, especially
those 1.5 million—60 percent of them children—who are trapped by the Israeli
military in Gaza, is part of the wider campaign by right-wing operatives like <A
href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Cheney_Lynne">Lynne Cheney</A> and
billionaires such as the Koch brothers to stamp out all programs and academic
disciplines that give voice to the marginalized, especially those who are not
privileged and white. Latinos, African-Americans, feminists, those in queer and
gender studies also feel this pressure. Under a bill signed by Republican Gov.
Jan Brewer, books by leading Chicano authors have been banned from public
schools in Tucson and elsewhere in Arizona on the ground that such ethnic
studies promote “resentment toward a race or people.” It is language similar to
what Ambassador Oren has used to justify his call for criminal prosecutions of
BDS activists—that they are advancing “bigotry.” The neoconservatism that grips
Israel has its toxic counterpart within American culture. And if other
marginalized groups within the university remain silent while Palestine
solidarity activists are persecuted on campuses, there will be fewer allies when
these right-wing forces come for them. And come they will. </P>
<P>Those of us who denounce the suffering caused by Israel and its war crimes
against the Palestinians and who support the BDS movement are accustomed to
sleazy Israeli smear campaigns. I have been repeatedly <A
href="http://www.nysun.com/new-york/baruch-requires-students-read-book-some-are/37616/">branded
as an anti-Semite </A>by the Israeli lobby, including for my book “War Is a
Force That Gives Us Meaning.” That some of these dissident voices, such as Max
Blumenthal, who wrote “Goliath: Fear and Loathing in Greater Israel,” one of the
best accounts of contemporary Israel, are Jewish does not seem to perturb
right-wing Israeli propagandists who see any deviation from the Israeli
government line as a form of religious heresy.</P>
<P></P>
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<P>“I have been on tour discussing <A
href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/imploding_the_myth_of_israel_20131103">my
book</A>, ‘Goliath,’ since October 2013,” said Blumenthal, with whom I spoke by
phone. “And on numerous occasions, Israel lobby groups and pro-Israel
activists have attempted to pressure organizations into canceling my events
before they took place. I have been slandered by teenage pro-Israel students,
prominent magazine columnists and even Alan Dershowitz as an anti-Semite, and my
family has been attacked in right-wing media simply for hosting a book party for
me. The absurd lengths pro-Israel activists have gone to stop my journalism and
analysis from reaching a wide audience perfectly illustrate their intellectual
exhaustion and moral poverty. All they have left is loads of money to buy off
politicians and the unlimited will to defend the only nuclearized apartheid
state in the Middle East. As young Arabs and Muslims assert their presence on
campuses across the country and Jewish Americans reel in disgust at Netanyahu’s
Israel, we are witnessing pro-Israel forces wage a fighting retreat. The
question is not whether they will win or lose, but how much damage they can do
to free-speech rights on their way towards a reckoning with justice.”</P>
<P></P>
<P>“It would be heartening if prominent liberal intellectuals would agree with
all of my conclusions, or would accept the legitimacy of BDS,” Blumenthal went
on. “But the only reasonable expectation we can hold for them is that they speak
up in defense of those whose free-speech rights and rights to organize are being
crushed by powerful forces. Unfortunately, when those forces are arrayed in
defense of Israel, too many liberal intellectuals are silent or, as in the case
of Michael Kazin, Eric Alterman, Cary Nelson and a who’s who of major university
presidents, they actively collaborate with fellow elites determined to crush
Palestine solidarity activism through anti-democratic means.”</P>
<P>Hillel chapters, sadly, often function as little more than Israeli government
and AIPAC campus outposts. This is true at Northeastern as well as <A
href="http://youngist.org/post/79469339434/barnard-college-censors-students-for-justice-in">at
schools such as Barnard College and Columbia</A>. And university presidents such
as Barnard’s Debora Spar see nothing wrong with accepting <A
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.533831">Israel-lobby tours
of Israel</A> while Palestinian students <A
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/i-risked-imprisonment-israel-and-death-study-united-states/13189">must
risk imprisonment</A> and even death to study in the United States. The
launching of campuswide defamation campaigns from supposedly religious houses is
a sacrilege to the Jewish religion. In seminary I read enough of the great
Hebrew prophets, whose singular concern was for the oppressed and the poor, to
know that they would not be found today in Hillel centers but would instead be
protesting with SJP activists. </P>
<P>The campus Hillel centers, with lavish budgets and gleaming buildings on
campuses often situated in centers of urban blight, offer running events,
lectures and programs to promote official Israeli policy. They arrange free
trips to Israel for Jewish students as part of the “Taglit Birthright” program,
functioning as an Israeli government travel agency. While Jewish students, often
with no familial connection to Israel, are escorted in these well-choreographed
propaganda tours of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remain
trapped in squalid refugee camps cannot go home although their families may have
lived for centuries on what is now Israeli land. </P>
<P>Israel has for decades been able to frame the discussion about the
Palestinians. But its control of the narrative is coming to an end. As Israel
loses ground it will viciously and irrationally attack all truth tellers, even
if they are American students, and especially if they are Jews. There will come
a day, and that day will come sooner than Israel and its paid lackeys expect,
when the whole edifice will crumble, when even students at Hillel will no longer
have the stomach to defend the continuous dispossession and random murder of
Palestinians. Israel, by ruthlessly silencing others, now risks silencing
itself. </P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>