[Peace-discuss] Tony Kushner's Letter to Brandeis President

[David Green]

Since it announced that it was awarding an honorary
doctorate to playwright Tony Kushner, Brandeis
University has come under fire from the Zionist
Organization of America, which regards Kusher as an
Israel critic unfit for recognition by a University
named for a Zionist pioneer. "It's as if Howard
University chose to honor David Duke," ZOA president
Morton Klein has said. Disturbed by the ZOA outcry,
Kushner penned a letter to Brandeis president Jehuda
Reinharz, the text of which is below.

President Jehuda Reinharz

Brandeis University

April 25, 2006

Dear President Reinharz,

            I don't want to ruin anyone's graduation
but on the other hand, the world's a big, scary  mess,
and there's no reason why graduation, which is when
students leave academia and enter the world, ought to
be stress-, dissent- or anger-free.  Ma nishtanah, if
you don't mind my saying so, why should this gathering
be different from all other gatherings?  Graduation is
a celebration and a transition. 

            I don't mean that I actually want to be a
source of stress, dissent or anger at Brandeis's
graduation.  As I wrote to you when I was first
informed that I had been chosen to receive an honorary
doctorate from Brandeis, I was flattered and
delighted, particularly because Brandeis is an
institution with a strong Jewish identity, and my own
Jewish identity is immeasurably precious to me.  Louis
Dembitz Brandeis, that Jewish-American lion of
jurisprudence, is a hero of mine, which makes the
honor even sweeter.  

            I have no problem with anyone taking issue
with my opinions about the state of Israel, and I am
always willing to engage in debate, as long as it
doesn't degenerate into a shouting contest.  I think
it's possible to disagree with me and not be an idiot
or a spawn of the devil.  I think it's even possible
to disagree with me and still be deserving of  an
honorary doctorate from Brandeis.  

            You haven't asked me to earn this degree
by clearing my name or by doing a better job than I've
done already articulating my opinions about Israel. 
It would be wrong to ask that of me, and foolish of me
to agree to attempt it.  I've already done my best in
essays and lengthy interviews.  I always try to do
better, to advance my thinking and writing, not to
defend it.

            If any among your students, faculty,
parents or trustees decide that they disagree with
what I have said about Israel, I hope first they'll
take the time to read what I've said about Israel,
read a whole complete word-for-word interview or essay
from start to finish, read two or more of them, in
fact, rather than a half-dozen tasty tidbits emailed
to them by people looking only to provoke outrage. 

             I don't think, write or speak in
soundbites, and people at a university shouldn't
either.  Israel, and everything else on earth worth
arguing about, deserves more than a sentence-worth's
consideration, and a person shouldn't be judged on the
basis of surgically selected quotes gleaned from
right-wing websites.  My essays and interviews aren't
hard to find.   I haven't been particularly reticent
about sharing my views.  If, after actually
familiarizing themselves with what I've written,
people think that I want to destroy Israel, that I'm
an anti-Semite and a self-loathing Jew, well, they're
completely wrong, and there are lots of Jews besides
me and my immediate family who'll happily tell them
they're wrong; but at least their error was earned by
honest labor, by grappling with reality -- in this
case my actual completed thoughts, my words and my
writing -- and not with a simple schematic version of
me, painted in garish hues by people who believe that
discrediting me, rather than telling the truth about
me, is what matters.

            I am a proud Jew, a Jewish-American man,
and my opinions about Israel are characterized by a
serious ambivalence -- a word, I know, that instantly
raises the hackles and blood-pressure of neocon tough
guys and gals.   But ambivalence, doubt, confession of
uncertainty, confusion even are all things that
thoughtful people experience when confronting terribly
tangled political situations.  Resolving the
hard-to-resolve is necessary to plot a course for
action, but in public discourse it's dishonest and
unsafe to pretend that we don't encounter
difficulties, complexities, even the tragically
unresolvable (which doesn't mean there's no solution,
just that the solution will entail profound loss). 
The middle east has always seemed to me to be a
paradigm of near-insuperable political difficulty.   

            I love Israel, but as a great fan of
pluralist secular democracy, I don't have faith in
nationalist or tribalist solutions for the problems of
oppressed and persecuted minorities; I have great
faith the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and
in a steadfast, absolute refusal to conflate
government with religious principle or ethnic
identity.  I love Israel, but I am neither a Zionist
nor an anti-Zionist; I'm a Diasporan Jew who isn't
willing to say that the history and culture of the
Diaspora was merely a long prelude of weakness and
misery leading to the founding of a Jewish state and
the invention of Jewish military power - I think there
are other kinds of power, there's an alternative
history of power to which Jews have made important
contributions.  Though I think nationalist solutions
to the problems of oppressed minorities are usually
mistakes, I love Israel, I am moved and excited by its
culture, its meaning in Jewish history,  but I'm
critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian
people, I'm opposed to  the occupation, the
settlements, the barrier wall, and attacks on
civilians, whether the civilians are Palestinian or
Israeli.  I love and admire the Palestinians but I
believe that in the midst of their suffering some
Palestinians have made their own terrible mistakes.  I
tend to believe that people make mistakes because of
their suffering rather than some inherent evil. 
Threading through all of this error and anger, on the
Israeli and Palestinian sides, I see histories of
persecution, injustice and suffering in collision. 
Though I don't believe in nationalist solutions to the
problems of minorities, I want a two-state solution to
the crisis in the middle east through courageous,
honest peace talks supported by the international
community.  

            Those who have shopped through my
interviews and essays looking for "proof" that I hate
Jews, Israel, Zionism , have produced the single sheet
of quotes you sent me.  These have been passed around
before, talismans of my wickedness.             

            What's excluded from that page of quotes
is all of the inconvenient complexity hurriedly noted
above -- and behind every sentence of that paragraph
of shorthand opinion is a long, complicated discussion
I obviously can't provide in this context; I'm writing
a letter, not a book.  What's excluded is any mention
of the fact that in every interview and essay on the
subject I've declared that Israel's existence must be
defended, its borders secure and its people safe. I
believe that by criticizing a country's policies you
strengthen rather than weaken it, and in patriotism as
in human relationships, uncritical adoration is
idolatry, not love.  And idolatry is forbidden by the
Second Commandment.

            I've been willing to explain myself, not
in defense or apology, but because I know that the
world is not a safe place for Jews.  Anti-Semitism is
very real and very threatening, and we're all entitled
-- wise in fact --  to be vigilant.  So even though I
think critical thinking is necessary, even in times of
danger, I understand that my criticism of Israel
raises alarms.  I want to be understood -- not agreed
with, but understood.             

            In the past several months, since I wrote
the screenplay for the film Munich, I've become
exhaustively familiar with a small but energetic and
strident group of people who have called me immoral,
an anti-Semite, a self-loathing Jew.  In the hysteria
of their invective there's a discernible desire to
establish an orthodoxy, dissension from which is
heresy.  I hope that the intellectual curiosity,
skepticism and integrity of the Brandeis community
will be proof against their tactics and their
intentions, which are dishonorable and all too
familiar. 

            Brandeis teachers, trustees, alumni,
students or their parents may still angrily disagree
with me, even after giving me a fair hearing.  I will
arrive on campus at the time I was invited to arrive,
confident in and appreciative of the University
community's adherence to the laudable norms of liberal
arts institutions, which encompass and encourage
vigorous, civil disagreement, which preclude only
violence, the urge to punish, to silence, to
excommunicate.                        

All my very best, and shalom.

Tony Kushner            
 
  

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com