[Peace-discuss] An open letter to Chancellor Richard Herman

[David Green]

December 12, 2004

An open letter to Chancellor Richard Herman,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Dear Chancellor Herman:

	On November 11, WILL-AM, our NPR station, broadcast a
local news item in which you vowed to promote a more
“sensitive” attitude regarding anti-Semitism among the
editors of the Daily Illini, the student newspaper. I
have also been told that your comments were reported
in the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette. This extended
letter is in response.

	My response is informed by several general points:

First, while sensitivity for the feelings and
perceptions of others is to be lauded, it should not
be enforced by the threat of censorship or silencing
in any venue, be it a newspaper, a classroom, or
elsewhere on campus. 

Second, the issue of Israel/Palestine is one of the
most difficult issues of our times to discuss openly
and objectively, primarily because there is a
concerted effort among those who call themselves
“supporters of Israel” to identify criticism of Israel
with anti-Semitism. Moreover, those who represent
“supporters of Israel” on campus are consistently
unwilling to discuss these issues in public venues
that present all sides of this conflict. Instead,
there is an organized effort, directed by national
groups like AIPAC and the Jewish Community Relations
Council, to have local Jewish leaders and students
serve as volunteer lobbyists for the state of Israel.
This promotes a culture of propaganda and
disinformation on our campus rather than one of
scholarship, critical thinking, and appropriate and
universal moral judgment. Again, the central tactic of
these groups, both nationally and locally, is to
identify criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, while
demonizing the Palestinian struggle, and consistently
characterizing Palestinians as untrustworthy and
violent. This tactic, which always implicitly invokes
the Nazi holocaust as a means of condemning and
silencing others, has over the past few years been
used shamelessly at the University of Illinois. I
would add that there is no process in place by which
those who claim to represent the views of the Jewish
community can actually discover what those views are
in an open, civil, educational, and non-coercive
environment.

Third, the editors of the opinion pages of the Daily
Illini have over the years appropriately given equal
space to views on all sides of this issue, something
that is rarely if ever done in the mainstream media
(while on the DI news pages, stories taken from the AP
wire evidence the same pro-Israel bias that one finds
in the general press). Whatever their errors in
editorial judgment—and those are at best trivial and
to be expected from student journalists—they should be
supported in this effort, rather than shamed,
censored, and silenced by elders with a political
agenda.

 I feel that it is quite inappropriate for you—as a
result of what is likely behind-closed-doors pressure
from some members of the local Jewish community—to use
the influence of your office to publicly or privately
discipline editors of the Daily Illini, especially in
such a selective and one-sided manner. Since you are
Jewish, I would think that at the very least you would
want to avoid the charges of bias and conflict of
interest that are an obvious response to your choosing
to address this particular issue rather than many
others, including that of the racist mascot that is so
offensive to Native Americans and many others,
including myself.


* * *

I will proceed by examining the charges made and the
context in which they have been made. The WILL news
item of 12/11 referred to a comic, an opinion column,
and a letter. I can understand that Matt Vroom’s comic
would be offensive to many, although he was arguably
mocking and satirizing anti-Semitism rather than
supporting it. In any event, I feel that silencing him
for a month sets a terrible example to students and
others regarding an appropriate response to
insensitive or offensive speech. Moreover, whatever
Vroom’s intentions, this comic indicates absolutely
nothing about a pattern of anti-Semitism on campus or
in the larger society, where it is for all practical
purposes non-existent—unless one equates anti-Semitism
with criticism of Israel.

 Vroom’s fault is most likely that given the
acceptance, success, and assimilation of Jews in
America (after all, the last two UIUC chancellors have
been Jewish), he thinks that by now we would have
developed either a sense of humor or a thick skin
about ridiculous stereotypes. Vroom does not
understand that in the hornet’s nest of Jewish/Zionist
institutional politics, any opportunity to play the
anti-Semitism card—even in a trivial context such as
this—is going to be used to build a case that is an
implicit defense for and legitimization of the actions
of the Jewish state, and their outlandish support by
the U.S government.

The opinion column referred to would I assume be that
of one Joseph Danavi, a student writing a one-time
column who repeated a fabricated quote attributed to
Ariel Sharon, as part of an otherwise well-informed
response to a regular student columnist, Elie Dvorin,
who openly celebrated the death of Yasser Arafat. This
quote was also employed last academic year by
columnist Mariam Sobh, who had to apologize twice
before she was absolved by those who claim to
represent the Jewish community. The repetition of this
quote is indeed unfortunate; Ariel Sharon’s horrendous
record of Arab bloodletting hardly needs
embellishment. But I would also remind you that
criticism of the Prime Minister of Israel, whether
accurate or otherwise, hardly implies anti-Semitism.
He is an elected leader of a state whose government
has been consistently and egregiously in violation of
international law, and criticism of him—unless openly
Jew-baiting, which this was not—can in no way be
construed to indicate hatred of all Israelis or all
Jews.

Finally, I do not know which “recent” letter to the
editor was referred to in the WILL report. I do know
that a published letter of mine (12/1) in response to
these claims of anti-Semitism was in turn criticized
by three writers. One complained that the DI publishes
too many of my letters, and that I repeat myself.
Another complained that I, a Jew, should not refer to
letter writers who are Jewish and address Jewish
issues as “Jewish writers.” Finally, Raif Melhado
complained that I should not refer to Jewish writers
as “hysterical,” “ignorant,” or “hypocritical,” and
that this was evidence of broad-based anti-Semitism on
my part. I obviously reject these charges. My
criticism was of several Jewish letter writers (if you
will pardon the expression), not of all Jews. As a
Jew, I have been a consistent critic both of Israel’s
policies, U.S. support for these policies, and the
tactics of those who play the anti-Semitism card in
order to silence such criticism. As I feel that the
views of Jewish leaders and “supporters of Israel” do
not represent those of Jewish people, I am careful not
to generalize about those who hold such views.


* * *

I will continue with the core of this open letter by
referring to the political context in which these
charges are made: in relation to the Daily Illini,
various events on our campus, and events on other
campuses that have experienced conflict during this
2004 fall semester.

Last academic year (2003-04) saw the visit of Daniel
Pipes, invited by Illinipac, the student extension of
AIPAC on our campus, in December. Students and others
opposed to Pipes’ record of anti-Muslim hate speech
appropriately protested his visit with a
counter-rally. Views from all sides were published in
the DI. Nobody was denied their freedom of speech.
Predictably, supporters of Pipes claimed that both his
critics and the editors of the DI were motivated by
anti-Semitism.

 Later, in its spring 2004 bulletin, the C-U Jewish
Federation re-printed an article from C.A.M.E.R.A.
(Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in
America) titled “Anti-Israel Venom at University of
Illinois Paper.” Most of this article was used to
vilify Mariam Sobh, a Muslim student journalist and
critic of Israeli policies, for a variety of reasons,
including her repetition of the fabricated Sharon
quote, which she had already retracted. I will quote
from the conclusion of this article: “Illini regular
Mariam Sobh has had a free hand to regurgitate
baseless propaganda with little or no supervision by
the DI editors, faculty, or board members of the
Illini Media, the entity that owns the newspaper. No
doubt the lax attitude toward Sobh’s screeds
encouraged other DI staff to vilify Israel and Jews. .
. Indeed, isn’t a university paper that indulges the
recklessness of a Mariam Sobh—a journalism student no
less—literally ‘educating’ students in hatred?”

This article was reproduced in a bulletin that is
disseminated solely to the local Jewish community,
most of whom do not read the Daily Illini. These
charges were not put forth for discussion in any
public venue. I find the content of this article and
the manner of its publication to be irresponsible and
inflammatory, as well as aggressively hostile toward a
local Muslim student journalist whose family
well-regarded in the community, and whose children
have attended school with many Jewish children,
including my own. Its purpose was not to join a public
debate about these issues, but to inspire hysteria,
paranoia, and hatred in the Jewish community—all, of
course, while implicitly supporting Israel’s behavior
and silencing rational debate about it. Again, a
horrible lesson about the rights and responsibilities
entailed by the freedom of speech has been transmitted
by the leaders of the Jewish community.

Also last academic year, in May 2004, Illinipac joined
with another right-wing student organization to invite
Yaron Brook, head of the Ayn Rand Institute, to speak
in the Natural History Building. I was in attendance,
and among many other things I heard him recommend a
pre-emptive nuclear strike against Iran, and describe
immigrants in our own country as having “gutter
cultures.” There were no repercussions from this
visit, which was the second of three that he has made
here in recent years. While I do not agree with
Canada’s hate speech laws, it is interesting to note
that when Brook was in transit to deliver a speech at
the University of Toronto in October 2002, Canadian
customs officials seized newsletters he was to
distribute associated with a lecture titled “The Moral
Case for Supporting Israel,” and confiscated them as
hate propaganda. Brook delivered a lecture with the
same title earlier this fall semester (2004) in the
Animal Sciences Building at the U of I. To their
credit, I guess, Illinipac was not listed as one of
the sponsors of this event, but only a student group
calling itself Students for the Defense of America,
which had co-sponsored the May lecture.

In September of this year (2004) Professor Omer Bartov
of Brown University was invited by the Center for the
Study of Jewish Culture and Society to deliver a
Millercom lecture at the U of I, and to participate in
a discussion of the “new anti-Semitism” at the
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
(IPRH). In regard to the latter subject, it is notable
that in February 2004 Bartov published an article in
The New Republic titled “Hitler is Dead, Hitlerism
Lives.” In it, he asserted the following: “Much more
publicity has been given to anti-Israeli protests on
American campuses, and these have demonstrated a
troubling trend. A group calling itself ‘New Jersey
Solidarity: Activists for the Destruction of Israel’
called for an ‘anti-Israel hate-fest’ to be held on
the campus of Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, in
October 2003.” 

The truth, of course, is that the group is simply
called New Jersey Solidarity, and that their
conference was not advertised as a hate-fest, but as a
promotion of solidarity for Palestinian rights and for
divestment from corporations that do business with
Israel. Bartov invented “Activists for the Destruction
of Israel” and “anti-Israel hate-fest” out of whole
cloth. This charge is not only slanderous, but as
anyone knows, totally implausible on any college
campus. I will await an explanation, retraction, and
apology from the local Jewish luminaries who promoted
his visit, if not from the obtuse Bartov himself. I
would also note that while I have heard many Jewish
and Israeli speakers at IPRH (which is headed by an
Israeli), I have never heard a Muslim, Arab, or
Palestinian. At the very least, this is evidence of
institutionalized racism at the U of I.

* * *

During this 2004 fall semester, the DI has employed at
least three columnists to express right-wing and
pro-Israel points of view: James Sobotka (a non-Jew),
Elie Dvorin, and David Johnson (the latter two
Jewish).  On September 7th, Sobotka wrote the
following: “The media is strongly sympathetic, for one
reason or another, to the Palestinians. Now, when
you’re writing your hate mail, please answer the
following question: If the media so accurately
portrayed Yasser Arafat, would he has won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1994? After starting the first
intifada, all Arafat deserved was a bullet in his
temple and a shallow grave.”

Let’s leave aside that the exiled Arafat had nothing
to do with the first intifada (1987). Subsequent to
this column, Sobotka intercepted an e-mail letter to
the editor that I had sent to the DI, and responded to
me with a personal e-mail, which he also put on his
blog. In it, he referred to me as a “son of a bitch”
three times. He also referred to me as “the most
notable bigot on campus,” and a “Matt Hale type.” He
concluded by saying “Until you are willing to accept
Israel’s right to exist, then please fuck off.” When
the editors of the DI were apprised of this situation,
Sobotka was relieved of his duties. But I would have
preferred that the DI simply publish the letter that
he had intercepted, relevant excerpts from his
response, and a full explanation of the situation.
Instead, the whole affair was quietly put to rest.
While Sobotka is not Jewish, both Jews and others need
to be apprised of the sort of twisted mentality that
comes with the territory of extreme right-wing
non-Jews who become fanatical supporters of Israel. If
you doubt me, I would refer you to Sobotka’s blog,
sexual pathology and all.

* * *

On September 9th, Elie Dvorin wrote, “In order for
Islam to reclaim any legitimacy, all Muslims need to
unequivocally condemn terrorism through their words
and deeds. Any Muslim who’s serious about eradicating
the tarnished image of Islam must first and foremost
admit that a problem within the religion currently
exists.” In other words, Muslims are presumed guilty
until claiming guilt, a charge which Jews who grew up
in Nazi Germany would be familiar. Two weeks later,
after negative responses to his column, he wrote of
his critics, “People are perfectly happy condoning
terrorism if it’s used against the right people (U.S.
citizens, Israelis, etc.).” Dvorin did not provide any
examples of those among his critics who condone
terrorism against anyone. He continued, “This group of
terrorist sympathizers doesn’t want to be forced to
take a definitive stance against terrorism, which is
why . . . they called me racist.” In other words,
anyone who objects to his framing of the issue of
terrorism is a terrorist sympathizer.

On October 25, David Johnson—a leader of Illinipac,
the local student Zionist propaganda
disseminator--wrote about the Middle East, “The
problem originates from the West, which gave the Arab
world fabulous sums for resources that could have been
taken at will. This has led to the irrational
self-contradictions of people like bin Laden and
Hussein, who have vowed to destroy the source of their
existence—Western liberalism. The threats we face from
much of the Islamic world stem directly from the fact
that for almost 50 years, they have lived detached
from reality. Because the dilemma was created by
Western shortsightedness, it is the West’s
responsibility to intervene and fix the problem.”
Although Johnson of course speaks only for himself, I
would also suggest that Johnson implicitly purports to
represent Jewish student opinion, and indeed no Jewish
student has challenged the views of either him or
Dvorin—whether from ignorance, confusion, fear, or
apathy. Needless to say, neither have any of the
official leaders of local Jewish institutions, who as
far as I can tell are not embarrassed by any of this,
and may in fact support it.

* * *

What follows is an excerpt of my letter that was
published in the DI on October 26th, which explains
itself. “The DI recently published columns by David
Johnson (10/4) and Elie Dvorin (10/7) repeating
Israel’s fabricated and scurrilous claim that a U.N.
ambulance was filmed loading a Hamas rocket. This
charge was disproved by the U.N. Representative, Peter
Hansen: ‘On neither count does the object shown in the
film correspond to this description: it is much
thinner, longer and obviously much lighter than a
rocket . . .it is clearly a folded stretcher, a
logical and indispensable accessory in any ambulance.’
This claim was later abandoned by Israel. No
retraction has been forthcoming from either columnist,
or the DI. This is journalistic negligence.” 

Again, I would ask not that these writers or their
editors be disciplined, but that they clearly state
what is now known to be the truth, and perhaps
supplement that with some information on the horrible
realities of the occupation in Gaza—perhaps something
about Palestinian children murdered on their way to
school or in classrooms by Israeli soldiers. Again,
there is no reflection of self-criticism on the part
of the leaders of the Jewish community, who are so
quick to cry anti-Semitism in response to the
slightest insensitivity or misinformation of others.
For your edification, I would add that much of what
Sobotka, Dvorin, and Johnson have had to say comes
directly from the extreme right-wing website
frontpagemag.com, which serves a primary conduit for
the latest in neoconservative and Zionist propaganda.

* * *

After the death of Yasser Arafat, Dvorin (11/15)
titled a column “Good riddance.” He luridly wrote, “A
man with that much innocent blood on his hands should
not have been allowed to die peacefully in a French
hospital with friends and family by his side. If
justice had prevailed, Arafat’s limbs would have been
collected from the bloodstained pavement, like those
of his numerous victims.” Dvorin concluded about the
funeral, “These events were extremely fitting for a
mass terrorist who thrived on death, destruction and
fear for more than half a century. The world is a much
better place without Arafat, and with any luck, the
moral nations of the world will help send his
terrorist supporters to visit him permanently.” 

The last sentence can be interpreted in two ways. More
benignly, Dvorin defines only “terrorist” supporters
as deserving death. More genocidally, Dvorin defines
all of Arafat’s supporters ipso facto as terrorists,
thus deserving death. I am also drawn to the notion of
“moral nations.” To me, this implies that there are
both moral and immoral nations, and that the lives of
those in immoral nations are to be less valued and
more casually dispensed with. This is crudely racist.

David Johnson was less crude in his analysis of
Arafat’s death: “If someone uses the words ‘Israel’
and ‘genocide’ in the same sentence, the alarm bells
in your head should ring. Similarly, if someone tries
to explain that Yasser Arafat was anything less than
the red-handed father of modern terrorism—responsible
for endless suffering on the part of Muslims, Jews and
Christians alike—you should raise your most suspicious
eyebrow.” 

Interim Chancellor Herman (may I call you interim
Chancellor Herman?), I hope you are well-informed
enough about the history of the Zionist movement and
the state of Israel, including its terrorist origins,
aggressive wars, and brutal occupation, to recognize
the bias behind such a statement, and to be duly
concerned as Chancellor, as an educator, and as a Jew.
Dvorin and Johnson are reflections of the quality of
intellectual and moral life regarding Middle East
politics (and U.S. foreign policy) that has been
created in the local and national Jewish institutional
environment. The editors of the DI—by and large
unprepared to deal with the ruthless tactics involved
in this discourse—should be the least of your worries.
I would also ask you to speculate for a moment what
the reaction might be among leaders of the Jewish
community would be if the death of, let’s just say for
example, Ariel Sharon, drew forth similar invective
from Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians on the pages of
the DI. We have already seen their reaction to a
comic.

* * *

What follows is a response to the execution of an
unarmed Iraqi combatant by an American soldier that
was captured on camera in Fallujah. This column
highlights the relationship between support for Israel
and support for the most wanton American imperialism
in the Middle East. I would also remind you that among
the Jewish community prior to the invasion of Iraq,
there were some who accused the antiwar movement of
being anti-Semitic, as a means of silencing dissent
among Jews and others.

For readers who may think that I may be distorting by
taking things out of context, I will submit Elie
Dvorin’s entire column of 12/6 without comment:

Despite the fact that U.S and Iraqi forces regained
control of the terrorist stronghold of Fallujah in
less than one week, the successful military operation
has not gone without heavy criticism from human-rights
groups and the international community. Video footage
filmed during a raid on a mosque shows a U.S. Marine
apparently shooting a wounded and unarmed terrorist.
As a result of the outcry against this "brutality,"
the marine has been removed from his unit and now
faces a court-martial.

Anyone with half a brain can read between the lines of
this unfortunate situation. Instead of defending this
man for acting courageously in a vicious war, the U.S.
government is willing to appease the international
community by offering this man up as a sacrificial
lamb. After facing worldwide criticism due to the Abu
Ghraib prison scandal, the administration was
unwilling to give any more political ammunition to
Europe and the rest of the anti-war community.
Consequently, the life of one of ours is at stake.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW),
two of the most extreme leftist human-rights watchdog
groups, came out with statements calling for a full
investigation. This doesn't come as a major surprise,
as these groups look for any opportunity to criticize
the United States and Israel while giving a free pass
to the Islamic world. Amnesty International used this
incident to deride the moral character of U.S. troops,
while an HRW spokesman claimed that this event was
likely a "war crime" and a "grave breach of the Geneva
Conventions."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't disemboweling
Iraqi women, beheading U.S. civilians on videotape and
shooting humanitarian-aid workers be considered war
crimes? I guess those aren't nearly as bad as killing
a terrorist who might be playing dead with a bomb
strapped to his body. Nonetheless, the Geneva
Conventions do not apply in this situation. They
address the treatment of uniformed soldiers, and the
terrorists in Fallujah are neither members of a
military or uniformed. By forcing our troops to play
by the rules when the enemy does not, we are putting
the lives of these brave men and women at unnecessary
risk. People justify applying the Geneva Conventions
to the war on terrorism by arguing that humane
treatment of terrorists will lead to the humane
treatment of our soldiers if they're captured. Anyone
who believes this is true is too naïve to understand
the reality of Islamic terrorism and will hopefully
never be in a position to influence public policy.

I might view this incident differently if the Marine
had walked into a Fallujah elementary school and
started indiscriminately shooting Iraqi children. That
being the case, let's not allow political correctness
to interfere with the facts. The Marine at the center
of this controversy shot and killed a terrorist. Not a
civilian, not a child - a terrorist. The day before
this event occurred, this same Marine was shot and
wounded and immediately returned to combat with his
unit. In addition, earlier that day, a member of his
unit was killed when he walked up to the dead body of
a booby-trapped terrorist. By the way, I'm still
waiting for Amnesty and HRW to condemn the practice of
strapping bombs to dead bodies. I have a feeling I'll
be waiting a long time. 

The U.S. government is putting the lives of more brave
men and women at risk. By investigating this matter
and pulling this Marine from his unit, the government
is essentially condemning an action that could save
lives. Instead of wasting the time and resources to
look into this matter, the Marines should be told to
use all necessary force to ensure their safety. If
this means killing a potentially unarmed terrorist to
guarantee the safety of their unit, then by all means
do so. Instead, our current policy has criminalized a
hero, and in the process, put the lives of other
heroes at risk.

* * *

	Finally, what follows is a recent, so-far unpublished
response to a column by David Johnson, which conforms
to the DI’s 300-word limit:

David Johnson (12-2) innocently writes that “two of
the nations who have done the most to combat genocide
and fascism over the past half century wind up
defending themselves from accusations of these very
things.” A few examples scratch the surface:

	Going beyond 3-4 million Vietnamese dead, Ed Herman
writes that prior to Cambodia’s killing fields
(1975-78), the U.S. Air Force dropped over 500,000
tons of bombs on rural Cambodia, killing scores of
thousands, creating a huge refugee problem, and
radicalizing the countryside.” Following Pol Pot’s
ouster by the Vietnamese, his forces “found a safe
haven in Thailand, a U.S. client state” for the next
15 years, protected by U.S. authorities.

	Stephen Shalom explores Indonesia’s genocide in East
Timor, which killed 200,000, a quarter of the
population: “When Congressional restrictions prevented
Carter from providing jets to Jakarta in 1978, he used
Israel as a conduit” to send U.S. warplanes to
Suharto.

	Israeli Jeff Halper summarized the U.S.-Israel
relationship: “Israel is the subcontractor for
American arms to the Third World. There is no terrible
regime . . . that does not have a major military
connection to Israel.” Walter LaFeber summarized the
Central American genocide (1979-91): “The minimum is
200,000 (40,000 in Nicaragua, 75,000 in El Salvador,
75,000 in Guatemala, 10,000 in Honduras).” All of
these killing machines were supplied by Israel.

	Business Week (12/8/80) explored the relationship:
“The Latin American market has developed rapidly
following the Carter Administration’s decision to
prohibit U.S. arms sales to right-wing regimes.”
Israel was a leading supplier to Argentina (during the
time of the neo-Nazi generals, who killed over a
thousand Jews), Chile (Pinochet), Guatemala (during
the Mayan genocide), and South Africa (during
neo-fascist apartheid).

	It is Johnson’s right to sanitize history. It is mine
to counter with illustrations of an unflattering
reality that persists to this day.

* * *

Now doesn’t all this make charges of anti-Semitism
from a privileged group of Americans look trivial and
silly? And this is a national  and systematic problem.
At Duke University in October, the desire of the
Palestine Solidarity Movement to have their yearly
conference on that campus caused an uproar. According
to one student journalist, “Jewish alumni, faculty,
and staff have gone out of their way to lobby Duke to
reject the PSM conference, mustering 92,000 signatures
for their online petition and denouncing professors
who have spoken out in support of free speech.” The
conference proceeded peacefully and productively,
providing the sort of scholarly and morally engaged
forum that one will never find promoted by “supporters
of Israel.”

In October, Hedy Epstein spoke to students at Stanford
University. She is an 80-year-old Jewish woman who
came to this country from Germany in the late 1930s on
the “kindertransport” that rescued Jewish children
from the impending genocide. She is now a critic of
the Israeli occupation of Palestine. A witness at her
talk wrote the following in the student newspaper: “In
addition to a plethora of fliers handed out demonizing
Epstein, throughout the talk, she was frequently
yelled at and interrupted. At one point a man suddenly
jumped up while Epstein was talking and recited what
appeared to be a prepared statement informing her of
pending legal actions against her. At another point
during one of the many tirades of the night, Epstein,
overwhelmed, had to physically turn away from the
audience.”

At Columbia University, a highly-regarded assistant
professor of Middle East history named Joseph Massad
is being attacked by a film produced by a group called
The David Project, which according to student Monique
Dols is “part and parcel of a larger campaign
involving a coalition of groups including McCarthyite
groups such as Campus Watch (Middle East Forum--Daniel
Pipes, Martin Kramer) who aim to marginalize voices
questioning the U.S. and Israel’s place in the Middle
East.” Dols writes, “The film cannot seriously be
called a documentary. It is a collection of
uncorroborated claims made by students with a
political axe to grind. Not once are the accused
professors asked for their views. And the opinions of
the many satisfied students are systematically
excluded.” 

As it turns out, the brains behind The David Project
is a Dr. Charles David, who is also one of co-founders
of the aforementioned C.A.M.E.R.A. Here is a quote
from a piece he wrote in 2003 after NPR aired a series
exploring the Mideast conflict: “NPR’s relentless
effort to single out Israel in a demonizing fashion is
very disturbing. As organized Palestinian violence
continues to rage, and as a new anti-Semitism,
connected to the Middle East conflict, arises
worldwide, the stakes have been raised. There is a
growing sense in the Jewish community that NPR’s
defamation of Israel contributes to a climate of
intellectual and even physical hostility against Jews
everywhere. When NPR reporters call a terrorist who
shoots children cowering in bed a ‘militant,’ or the
head of a terrorist organization a ‘spiritual leader,’
they debase the English language and they cheapen 
Jewish life by making attacks against Jews seem
normal, even legitimate.”

I would ask you, Chancellor Herman: Does any of this
ring true to your lifetime experience as a Jew in this
country, at any time, at any place, in any
circumstance?

Two more paragraphs from Dols’ article elaborate on
the nature of the opposition to this documentary and
the campaign of persecution that motivated its
production:

“This is not a conflict between Jewish students and
everyone else on campus. Hundreds of students turned
out to the film’s premier. In the discussion period
following the film, many Jews braved a largely hostile
atmosphere to challenge the validity of the
“documentary,” and voiced their opposition to the
harassment of MEALAC (Middle Eastern and Asian
Languages and Cultures). They spoke passionately in
defense of Professor Massad, and the harassment
leveled at Jews on campus who criticize Israel.
Stephanie Schwartz, a student at the Jewish
Theological Seminary (JTS), a self-identified
anti-Zionist Jew, spoke of the daily haranguing that
she faces for wearing a keffiyeh (a Palestinian scarf)
in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. 

               “Schwartz explains that: ‘The dialogue
about Israel at JTS is extremely narrow. I can say
that I don't agree with all of Ariel Sharon's
policies, but it's almost unheard of for someone to
say that they don't support Israel's ‘right’ to attack
Palestinians. One of my professors, in a discussion
about all of the various movements of Judaism in
America today, said that the only thing that unites
American Jews is support for Israel. It's just assumed
that we're all Zionists.’ The tragedy is that Jews
cannot study their history and religion without being
bombarded by Zionism. The red herring of this debate
is that the small number of students who made this
film claim to speak for the experience of all Jews.
Meanwhile they continue to make life difficult for
anti-Zionist Jews and non-Jews alike on campus.”

* * *

Likewise at the University of Illinois, it is simply
assumed by Jewish leadership—such as it is—that
students are here not to consider the conflict in
Israel and Palestine with an open mind and from all
perspectives, but to be trained to make what Alan
Dershowitz (also a speaker here in 2003) calls “the
case for Israel,” as in the title of his remarkably
shabby and scurrilous book.

The Fall 2004 issue of the quarterly glossy Reform
Judaism, which is received by all members of Reformed
congregations (presumably including you), contains an
article titled “Confrontation on Campus” by Josh
Hamerman. This article advises Jewish students on
“counteracting anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic factions
on campus.” Let me first say that there is no such
thing as an anti-Semitic faction on any campus in this
country—as you well know—except perhaps at Christian
fundamentalist campuses, where support for Israel is
fanatical. Hamerman relates advice from a Rabbi Marc
Israel, who “advises students to try to determine
whether they (critics of Israel) are voicing a
legitimate complaint about Israeli government policies
or whether they are operating from a platform of
veiled anti-Semitism.” To pass this test, critics must
meet two criteria: first, accept the right of a Jewish
state to exist; second, not hold Israel to a “higher
standard” than other nations.

It seems to me that in the real world of human
relationship and communication, especially the world
of college campuses, nobody who expresses a
conflicting perspective should be assumed to have any
ulterior motives or have to pass any test to prove the
absence of bigotry—least of all critics of a country
that has the horrible record of Israel. It seems to me
that when a Jewish student meets someone critical of
Israel, he or she would do best to exercise a natural
curiosity about the source and the validity of the
information on which the critic is basing judgment;
whether this information is in conflict with what has
been previously learned; why it has been heretofore
unknown; and how this new information, if valid, might
change their overall view of the situation. It seems
to me quite unnatural, not to mention pretentious and
arrogant, for a Jewish student to hold a critic of
Israel to such a contrived test, to deceptively
administer and evaluate such a test, and to be willing
to label and dismiss a critic (teacher, fellow
student, friend, colleague) as an anti-Semite
(Jew-hater, potential Nazi) on the basis of such
subjective, vague, arbitrary, and propagandistic
assumptions.

 I cannot imagine that this is a model for
intellectual discourse that you would advocate in
regard to Israel or anything else. I cannot imagine
any Jewish student with a grain of good sense and
moral honesty adopting the ridiculous criteria
advocated by this clueless rabbi. But this sort of
litany has become quite standard in what passes for
intellectual discourse in a Jewish context.

* * *

It is distressing to me—as a peace activist, a Jew of
conscience, a critical thinker, and as the parent of a
Jewish U of I student—that you have allowed
transparently politically motivated charges of
anti-Semitism to come to the forefront of this debate,
rather than substantive issues of peace and social
justice pertaining to the criminality of both Israeli
and American policies.

Warmest regards of the season,

David Green
University Employee