[Peace-discuss] "middle-aged Jews of diverse backgrounds" ???

[David Green]

This is pretty scary stuff:

Message: 2         
   Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 16:37:43 -0600
   From: Martha Reese <martha at martinreese.com>
Subject: The Jewish Week: Columbia Bias Panel (March
10, 05)

http://www.jewishweek.org/news/newscontent.php3?artid=10625

Thursday, March 10, 2005
The Jewish Week 
Weiner: Disband Columbia Bias Panel
Congressman makes call at heated conference on Mideast
studies.
Liel Leibovitz - Staff Writer

Stepping up his denunciation of Columbia¹s handling of
the controversy
engulfing its Middle East studies department, Rep.
Anthony Weiner 
called on
the university to ³disband² the committee looking into
charges that 
Jewish
students were intimidated by Arab professors in the
department.

The call, the first by a public official urging an end
to the 
committee, was
made Sunday at a heated daylong conference at Columbia
on how the 
Middle
East conflict is taught at American universities and
comes as the 
committee
is less than a week away from revealing its findings.

The committee, which is expected to release its final
report on March 
16,
has been taking testimony from students, faculty and
others for several
weeks. 

Weiner, the Democratic mayoral hopeful who represents
Brooklyn in 
Congress,
said ³free speech does not come without equal part
responsibility. 
There is
a rise of anti-Semitism that is almost indisputable on
college 
campuses. We
have a rise of anti-Semitism here in New York. It is
our responsibility 
to
stand up when free speech is used for intimidation.²

Weiner also disclosed that he pressured New York City
Schools 
Chancellor
Joel Klein to dismiss Columbia professor Rashid
Khalidi from a program
instructing the city¹s teachers on how to address
issues pertaining to
Middle East studies. Khalidi is not among the
professors mentioned in
³Columbia Unbecoming,² the film in which Jewish
students allege that 
they
and others were intimidated by pro-Palestinian
professors in the Middle 
East
studies department, touching off the widespread
conflict. Weiner has 
called
for the firing of one of the professors implicated in
the film, Joseph
Massad. 

Joining Weiner in pressuring Columbia for an
independent investigation 
were
David Weprin, chair of the City Council¹s Finance
Committee, and 
Council
Speaker Gifford Miller. Both urged the university to
investigate 
allegations
made in the film by Jewish students.

Miller, in a statement read by an aide, cited a letter
written several
months ago by members of the City Council advising
Columbia University
President Lee Bollinger that City Hall was closely
watching the issue.

³We will not accept a whitewash,² the aide said.

The conference, titled ³The Middle East and Academic
Integrity on the
American Campus² and sponsored by several Jewish
organizations, 
featured
lectures from academics, activists and politicians
pertaining to the 
ways in
which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is reflected in
American
universities. 

The auditorium, a brightly lit room at the business
school, was packed 
with
some 250 people, with at least 100 more in an overflow
room close by. 
In a
sign of how sensitive the conference topic was,
everyone in attendance 
was
subjected to heavy security, including magnetometer
checks. The crowd 
was
composed mainly of middle-aged Jews of diverse
backgrounds.

At the outset, the audience listened patiently as the
speakers repeated
similar messages, mainly stressing the need for Jewish
activists and 
the
Jewish community at large to remain vigilant against
increasing
manifestations of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism on
college campuses.

Notable among the presentations were Laurie Zoloth, a
professor at
Northwestern University, and Natan Sharansky, the
Israeli minister of
diaspora affairs, both speaking via satellite.

Zoloth gave a thoughtful talk about the anti-Semitic
undertones of the
American left. A bioethicist and a prominent figure in
the 1960s 
student
movement, she witnessed a slew of anti-Semitic attacks
at San Francisco
State University in 2002.

³There is a renewed sense of permission to speak
anti-Semitism,² Zoloth
said. 

Sharansky said ³in an academic debate, when only one
point of view is
presented, that is extremely dangerous.² In a clear
reference to the
situation at Columbia, he added, ³then it¹s
propaganda, brainwashing ‹
something I know very well.²

Sharansky, a former prisoner in the Soviet Union,
toured several dozen
American colleges last year and has spoken extensively
about what he 
sees as
unbalanced teaching on the Middle East conflict.

Soon after Sharansky spoke, the tone of the conference
shifted 
drastically.

In an emotional address, Phyllis Chesler, emerita
professor at the 
College
of Staten Island and author most recently of a book
titled ³The New
Anti-Semitism,² equated anti-Israel activists on Duke
University¹s 
campus
with both the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis. (Duke hosted
a 
pro-Palestinian
rally in the fall that attracted criticism from
pro-Israel activists.)

Chesler dubbed Palestinian terrorists ³Islamikaze,² a
pun on the 
Japanese
kamikaze suicide pilots in World War II. She also
accused Islam of 
³gender
cleansing² against women, as well as of apartheid.

When Chesler defended Israel¹s actions regarding the
2002 battle in 
Jenin,
one woman in the audience shouted, ³We should have
bombed them from the
start,² referring to the Palestinian residents of
Jenin.

³We should have killed them all,² a man yelled.

Another man in the audience, who turned out to be a
member of the 
leftist
group Jews Against the Occupation, rose to ask a
question, prefacing 
his
remarks by saying that he had once been shot by the
Israeli army.

He was drowned out by a sea of invectives.

³Too bad they missed,² shouted a young man with a
denim shirt.

Another man added, ³They should have shot you in the
head.²

Members of the press, who sat in an easily
recognizable section of the 
room,
were not immune from the harsh words.

Several reporters were approached numerous times by
angry audience 
members
demanding that they identify themselves.

³I want to know who you are,² one man told a freelance
reporter, 
wagging his
finger near the reporter. ³I want to see how your
obvious bias affects 
your
reporting.² 

The Jewish Week¹s reporter was approached with similar
demands for
identification and was flash-photographed repeatedly
by a woman in the
audience. When asked to stop, the woman said, ³We¹re
taking pictures of 
you.
We want to know who you are.²

A New York Times photographer, taking photos of the
silenced dissenter 
from
Jews Against the Occupation leaving the room, was
surrounded by a large
group of people telling her to put down her camera.

³You have no right to do this,² one woman yelled,
waving her hand in 
the
photographer¹s face.

Another man said, ³It¹s our event, not his. Don¹t
distort it like the 
Times
always does.² 

The photographer left the auditorium.

Charles Jacobs, founder of the David Project, one of
the event¹s 
sponsors
and the man behind the ³Columbia Unbecoming²
documentary, called Jewish
critics of the film, including some Columbia
professors, ³Marranos of
Morningside Heights,² a derogatory reference to Jews
who converted to
Christianity to avoid the Spanish Inquisition.

Jacobs added that Middle East departments in the
United States are
controlled by two trends: Palestinianism and Saidism,
named after the 
late,
controversial Columbia Professor Edward Said, a
champion of the 
Palestinian
cause. 

Palestinianism, Jacobs said, ³is a cult that obscures
any credible 
academics
regarding Israel. It¹s a highly cultivated weapon of
mass distraction.²

Saidism, on the other hand, is a ³gag order on
Westernism that enforces
silence,² he said. 

Immediately following the speech by Jacobs, in which
he introduced a 
small
band of black Sudanese to talk about their torture by
Arabs, the 
documentary
was screened. As the film, which has gone through a
number of edits, 
ended,
a few students featured in it spoke.

Ariel Beery, the driving force behind the documentary,
began by 
expressing
his objection to many of the heated sentiments
expressed both from the
podium and by the crowd. He stressed the importance of
a levelheaded 
and
serious academic debate and denounced brash, hateful
comments of any 
kind.

Beery was booed.


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