[Peace-discuss] Letter to DI re Israeli speaker

[David Green]

The Program for Jewish Culture and Society is currently sponsoring lectures by prominent Israeli historian Yosef Gorny on “The Origins of the Arab-Israel Conflict.” This is part of a long-term program of “Israel Studies” supported by PJCS and Jewish Federations of Chicago. There could not be a more blatant use of private and politically-motivated support to provide an academic cover for Israel’s state interests, which include occupation, apartheid, and attendant human rights violations.
  On October 23rd, Professor Gorny—for all his scholarly credentials—presented a rambling narrative that was largely without scholarly merit. He condescended to Palestinians, and employed the transparent rhetoric of Jewish “retaliation.” He mitigated Israeli culpability for ethnic cleansing by claiming that “some Palestinians ran, others were pushed out.” Would he claim that in Germany in the 1930s, some Jews ran, and others were pushed out? Is this a distinction that makes a difference?
  Gorny  identifies with a “liberal” form of “labor Zionism,” which he  claims wanted to share the land with the native Arabs, while more aggressive Zionists—as well as Palestinians—were responsible for violence. This is nonsense. Plans for “transfer” (expulsion) were central to Labor Zionism, and were carried out by the patriarchs of the Jewish state, including Ben Gurion, Dayan, and Rabin. They believed in a Jewish majority in a Jewish state, and well understood that it would take intimidation and violence to achieve it. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has shown in “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” they acted systematically and brutally.
  There were no more than three or four PJCS faculty members at Gorny’s talk. Are they disinterested or embarrassed? This campus deserves scholarly, insightful, and respectful discussion of this issue, representing perspectives from all parties—not partisan and racist rationalizations thinly disguised by a grandfatherly Jewish persona.

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