[Peace-discuss] My letter in N-G

[David Green via Peace-discuss]

 http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letters-editor/2015-01-10/legalisms-trivialize-painful-circumstances.html
This responds to Michael LeRoy’s accusation that Steven Salaita isguilty of “cyberbullying” (Commentary, 1/4). My experience of Salaita, throughhis scholarly writing, talks, and tweets, does not lead me to believe that headvocates harming anyone. Instead, I believe he is in enormous pain regardingIsrael/Palestine, both as a person of Palestinian-American background and ofinformed social conscience. In this context I find LeRoy’s words to constitutea careless form of slander.From my perspective as a Jewish-American advocate for socialjustice, I have also been in enormous pain regarding Israel/Palestine, forsubstantive reasons that I have not exactly kept secret. This results from notonly Israeli occupation and violence against a defenseless people—which couldnot proceed without U.S. taxpayer support—but the ethnocentric and racistnarrative that is promoted by the mainstream media and Jewish institutions (inmy name).LeRoy adds legalistic trivialization to the repertoire employed bythe local Jewish establishment to avoid addressing the substantive issueof Israel/Palestine. This can only be explained by profound ignorance ofhistorical and current realities.But perhaps I’m misinformed. Perhaps over 18 years of voraciousscholarly reading, critical thinking, and writing, I’ve missed something. Onceagain, all I can do is invite LeRoy, Cary Nelson, Robert Silverman, and otherJews to join me in a public presentation of our substantiveunderstandings of the conflict. The local Jewish community deserves better thanthe ongoing distraction of the Salaita affair as neurotic displacement, whileIsrael’s steady descent into colonialist madness proceeds in our names. 
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