[Peace-discuss] Zionism vs. Intellectual and Political Freedom on American College Campuses

[David Green]

Zionism vs. Intellectual and Political Freedom on
American College Campuses (with links)

David Green
Champaign, IL

It has become clear during the course of this academic
year (2004-05)—if it was not already—that campus
advocacy of Zionist ideology and Israeli state
interests is shamelessly repressive of open and
respectful discourse based on high standards of
evidence, argument, and morality. This repression
targets basic 1st Amendment freedoms of speech,
assembly, and press; academic and more general
intellectual freedom; and—most crucially—the political
freedom to translate well-documented truths and
carefully considered moral judgments into advocacy and
activism. Like the struggle in Israel and Palestine,
conflict on college campuses has an asymmetrical
quality. On one side is a well-funded program for
propaganda and defamation, all the while claiming the
victimization of Jews both here and abroad, and
profoundly racist against Arabs and Muslims. On the
other side is the promotion of easily demonstrated
truths about historical and current realities of the
systematic denial of Palestinian rights, drawn from
scholarly sources, international law, and the reports
of major human rights organizations. But unlike the
struggle in the Middle East, supporters of Israel
cannot use violence with impunity, and thus the
struggle is a spirited and hopeful one, especially for
those with the truth on their side.

Before considering this phenomenon, I would offer a
few observations about the larger political context.
First, U.S. policies toward the Middle East, including
Israel, are driven by American priorities; albeit
these priorities have over the past 40 years
increasingly coincided with those of Israel,
culminating in the current era of Neocon-Likud
collaboration. Nevertheless, when there are
conflicting interests, such as in the Jonathan Pollard
case and the current investigation into AIPAC spying,
it becomes clear that the U.S. administration will put
its foot down, and that both Israel and American
Jewish leaders will comply, if not without
disingenuous and face-saving complaint. Second, the
power of AIPAC is directed not so much at the policies
of the executive branch, which are largely determined
by geopolitical and defense industry interests, but at
the Congress. No member can be allowed to leave the
reservation of long-running American/Israeli rejection
of a just solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict
without public punishment, including charges of
anti-Semitism and extravagant funding of opposing
candidates. Finally, suffice it to say that the
mainstream media, for reasons both inherent in the
“manufacture of consent” and specific to this problem,
make it impossible for the average U.S. citizen to
understand the blatant reality of Palestinian
victimization. Thus relatively little effort has to be
made by Jewish Zionist organizations to shape the
views of Americans in general about Israel and
Palestine, especially when one considers the strenuous
efforts of Christian Zionists to this end.

It is in this context that college campuses have
become the primary venue, such as it is, of honest and
disruptive discourse about this conflict, and the
primary focus of efforts by Zionist organizations to
curtail the freedoms that are essential for debate,
advocacy, and action by students, faculty, and
activists for a just peace. It is only on college
campuses that Palestinian rights advocates can be
claimed to pose even an imagined threat to the
hegemony of Zionist propaganda in mainstream American
political culture. During the past year, supporters of
the Palestinian cause have been faced with the gamut
of organized efforts by Zionist organizations to deny
basic freedoms: speech, press, academic, intellectual,
and political. As cogently argued by Noam Chomsky,
Norman Finkelstein, Alexander Cockburn, and many
others, the primary tactic employed in these efforts
is to identify criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
At Harvard, this charge has been notably made by
President Lawrence Summers and Law Professor Alan
Dershowitz. This argument is supported with banal
assertions of the “unique” nature of the Nazi
holocaust, and by an evolving body of fraudulent
scholarship and historical propaganda (including by
Dershowitz) in relation to the Zionist movement and
the state of Israel. The most recent addition to this
litany is the “generous offer” made by Ehud Barak to
Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000.

The tone of the Zionist claim to victimization that
underlies the current phase of this campaign was set
in 2003 by Israeli politician Natan Sharansky, with
his spurious claim that Jewish students are being
silenced on American campuses that have become
“hot-houses of anti-Israel opinion.” Since, then,
Sharansky has become a favorite of George Bush and
Condoleeza Rice. Highly-organized and well-funded
efforts by American Zionists to suppress expressions
of support for Palestinian rights on college campuses
operate at many levels. AIPAC (American Israel Public
Affairs Committee) has intensively organized and
trained Zionist students as advocates for Israel, with
all of the distortion and defamation that that
entails. Campus Watch, a program of the Middle East
Forum (Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer), has targeted
professors of Middle Eastern Studies around the
country in McCarthyite fashion, and indeed the entire
Middle East Studies Association (MESA). Charles Jacobs
of the David Project (and co-founder of CAMERA,
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in
America) has produced a propagandistic “documentary,”
“Columbia Unbecoming,” defaming professors of that
University’s Middle East and Asian Languages and
Cultures (MEALAC) department. Yigal Carmon, founder of
the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), has
threatened Professor Juan Cole of the University of
Michigan with a lawsuit for critical comments Cole
made on his popular blog. Pipes has recently settled a
lawsuit brought by an Oregon professor who fought back
against Pipes’ customary slanders.

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP,
former Clinton diplomat Dennis Ross, mythmaker of the
“generous offer”), provides a “respectable” Washington
think tank image for those who regularly bring their
arguments to a more official academic environment,
albeit in campus venues that systematically exclude
Palestinian voices. At a more vulgar level, David
Horowitz’s frontpagemage.com website works to
disseminate the latest in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim
propaganda from himself, Pipes, Phyllis Chesler, and
others to Zionist students, including campus newspaper
columnists. Horowitz’s website has its origins in his
Center for the Study of Popular Culture, with its far
right critique of “political correctness” of (liberal)
campus culture. 

The venerable Anti-Defamation League provides a “civil
rights” cover for equating criticism of Israel with
anti-Semitism, as it has done for the past 35 years.
As an adjunct of the B’nai B’rith, the ADL has
institutional access to Hillel. Hillel provides a
“campus center for Jewish life” networking environment
for Zionist Jewish students, connecting them to
organizations like AIPAC and Campus Watch, and
ferrying them to Washington and Israel for
indoctrination in “Israel advocacy.” Local Jewish
Federations provide a larger institutional context for
campus repression, disseminating Zionist propaganda,
demonizing campus advocates for Palestinian rights,
and advising alumni to withdraw financial support
unless demands to repress criticism of Israel and U.S.
support for Israel are met. The Reform movement (Union
for Reform Judaism) advises students on “how to talk
to critics of Israel.” Students are told not to
seriously consider a variety of perspectives, but
instead to learn to detect “anti-Semitism” among
critics of Israel who may either “deny Israel’s right
to exist,” or “hold Israel to a higher standard.” The
implication, of course, is that critics of Israel are
to be either vilified or dismissed as Jew haters.

It is in this context that the current academic year
has seen the fabrication and framing of several
celebrated instances of conflict and repression on
college campuses, most prominently at Duke and
Columbia. But there are also numerous other minor
skirmishes, such as at Carnegie-Mellon University and
the University of Illinois. I have intensively
documented events at the latter campus in an open
letter to its Interim Chancellor. I will conclude by
referencing links to that letter and others that
document the current Zionist disinformation and
intimidation campaign, as well as the efforts of those
who struggle for both their own political freedoms
and, more importantly, the human and political rights
of Palestinians.


1. 
http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.10.24/oped1.html

Tour of U.S. Schools Reveals Why Zionism Is Flunking
on Campus 
By Natan Sharansky, Forward, October 24, 2003
Sharansky has since become the high-minded theorist of
democracy for George Bush, who claims to have read his
book.

2. 
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=mcneil

The War on Academic Freedom
By Kristine McNeil, The Nation, November 11, 2002
A good background summary.

3. 
http://www.hillel.org/Hillel/NewHille.nsf/0/039D27FB094E07B385256C3E00734215?OpenDocument

Anti-Semitism on Campus 
Richard M. Joel, Hillel President and International
Director 
on Lawrence Summers Speech on Anti-Semitism
Hillel Website, September 24, 2002
After using anti-Semitism to silence critics of
Israel, Summers is now complaining that he is being
silenced for expressing his view that women may be
genetically unable to compete in math and science.
4. 
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=9

Don't Tell Anyone!
E-mail message to Norman Finkelstein, March 12, 2005
Reveals the tactics of the Pittsburgh Jewish Community
prior to Finkelstein’s visit.

5. 
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Finkelstein/Pittsburgh.html

Jewish community lines up to blunt message of
anti-Zionist author 
By Caitlin Cleary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 15,
2005
Reports on efforts to deny people an opportunity to
hear Finkelstein, but not on the substance of the
talk; a talk with a similar message from Vancouver can
be accessed in Finkelstein’s website (see above).

6.  http://electronicintifada.net/v2/printer3296.shtml

"Columbia Unbecoming" in the clear light of day
Monique Dols, The Electronic Intifada, 5 November 2004
A graduate student exposes the film as propaganda.

7.  http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1724

Students, Outsiders Spar at Columbia Conference
by Nathaniel Popper, Forward, March 11, 2005
Details an astonishing display of racist hatred.

8.  http://www.counterpunch.org/robert03262005.html

Columbia "Unbecoming"
A European Student's Experience at Columbia
By Marc Robert, Counterpunch, March 26, 2005
The whole truth and nothing but from a bewildered
foreign student.

9.  http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1742

Academic Integrity Travestied at Columbia Middle East
Studies Conference
By Terri Ginsberg, Z Magazine, March 14, 2005
      A critical Jewish perspective.

10.  http://lefthook.org/Ground/Birch031305.html

N.Y. officials fire left-wing professor: Witch-hunt at
Columbia 
By Jonah Birch, Left Hook, March 2005
Rashid Khalidi is prevented from speaking to New York
City public school teachers.

11. 
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/09/29/415aa16425330?in_archive=1

PSM draws continued criticism; Jewish schools withdraw
support from Duke, TIP
By Kelly Rohrs, Duke Chronicle,  September 29, 2004
To be fair, Jewish students at Duke did not try to
prevent the conference—that effort came from outside
Jewish organizations and Duke alumni.

12. 
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/18/4173ae82d81f9?in_archive=1

Conference closes on peaceful note
By Kelly Rohrs, Duke Chronicle, October 18, 2004
The conference itself, of course, was constructive and
peaceful.

13. 
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/20/41765464d23bf?in_archive=1

Jewish community decries Chronicle; Students voice
concerns about column, coverage at FCJL meeting
By Liana Wyler, Duke Chronicle, October 20, 2004
The Duke student paper is criticized by some Jewish
students regarding its response to a student columnist
who articulated painful truths.

14. 
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/26/417e3e4b845cb?in_archive=1

PSM: Imagining Peace
By Bridget Newman, Duke Chronicle, October 26, 2004
A positive view of the Palestine Solidarity Movement
conference.

15. 
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/28/4180e2161935a

Student against terrible concert
By Amelia Herbert, Duke Chronicle, October 28, 2004
A negative view of the efforts of Jewish students to
pretend that they were not simply supporting Israel.

16. 
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/18/4173b1de57041?in_archive=1

The Jews 
By Philip Kurian, Duke Chronicle, October 18, 2004
The above-mentioned column that created hysteria by
stating that Jews are a privileged group in American
society, and by mentioning Norman Finkelstein; note
the e-mail responses.

17.  http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=4047

Repressive MEMRI 
By Juan Cole, Antiwar.com, November 24, 2004
An attempt to intimidate a respected professor and
blogger.

18. 
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/12/02/c1.cr.cardsuit.1202.html

UO professor, authors settle defamation suit 
By Bill Bishop, The Register-Guard (Eugene, Oregon),
December 2, 2004
Daniel Pipes customary slanderous tactics finally cost
him some money.

19.  http://hnn.us/comments/6399.html

Pressure in Colorado
By Paul Harvey, History News Network, December 30,
2002
Attempt by Pipes and others to silence Hanan Ashrawi;
background for the Ward Churchill case.

20. 
http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display_any/22672/index.php

An Open Letter to Chancellor Richard Herman Regarding
Charges of Anti-Semitism and Issues of Freedom of the
Press at the Daily Illini
By David Green, Urbana-Champaign Independent Media
Center, December 17, 2004
Zionist student columnists express openly racist views
against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims; Chancellor
responds by commenting on anti-Semitism.

21.  http://www.counterpunch.org/green03192005.html

The Holocaust Industry Comes to the University of
Illinois
By David Green, Counterpunch, March 19, 2005
Israeli Holocaust historian uses academic platform to
promote hysteria against what he sees as “Hitlerism”
in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

David Green (davegreen48 at yahoo.com) is an employee of
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is a
member of AWARE, the local Anti-war Anti-racism Effort
(www.anti-war.net), and is associated with Not In My
Name (www.nimn.org), a Chicago-based group comprised
mostly of Jews who are opposed to Israel’s occupation
of Palestine.