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[solly]

Terry w.

Good post.

One small point with which I think there is possibly some conjecture is the treatment Israel gets in the press. As someone who has recently become sympathetic with the Palestinian plight I cannot agree. For instance, the kidnapping incident which supposedly sparked the Lebanese war got huge coverage but the Israeli kidnapping of a Doctor and his son in Gaza the week before was never mentioned. Very few media outlets highlight the fact that Israel currently exacts 76 Palestinian lives for each Israeli killed by rockets.

Jonathon Cook, who lives in Nazareth says:

First, we cannot easily know what Hizbullah is trying to hit because Israel has located most of its army camps, weapons factories and military installations near or inside civilian communities. If a Hizbullah rocket slams into an Israeli town with a weapons factory, should we count that as an attack on civilians or on a military site?
The claim being made against Hizbullah in Lebanon -- that it is “cowardly blending” with civilians, according to the UN’s Jan Egeland -- can, in truth, be made far more convincingly of the Israeli army. While there has been little convincing evidence that Hizbullah is firing its rockets from towns and villages in south Lebanon, or that its fighters are hiding there among civilians, it can be known beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israeli army camps and military installations are based in northern Israeli communities.
An obvious point that no one seems to be making -- and given a news blackout that lasted several hours, Israel clearly hoped no one would make -- is that the 12 soldiers who were killed on Sunday in Kfar Giladi by a Hizbullah rocket were, under Egeland’s definition, “cowardly blending” with the civilian population of that community. We know there are still civilians in Giladi because their response to the rocket barrage was quoted in the Israeli media.

http://www.jkcook.net/Articles2/0277.htm#Top
 
Another fact that seems to escape the media who characterise Hezbollah as targeting civilians is the massive disparity in the actual death count - 1200 Lebanese to 44 Israeli out of which 18 were Israeli Arabs.

Cheers.

[terryw]

Solly,

I wasn't implying in my post that the Israelis can do no wrong or that the Palestinians are always wrong.  But there is one thing to keep in mind in all the long history of attacks and counter attacks: the Israelis attacks are almost always in response to a rocket launched from Gaza or a suicide bombing against Israeli civilians.  During its existence the Palestinian Authority has acted like thugs toward its own people, while the Israeli army has been subject to criticism from a parliamentary democracy.

If my picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is wrong, I'm willing to listen.

[solly]

Terryw.

This debate is more properly about the Jewish reaction to dissent. As a newcomer I am reluctant to engage directly on the Palestine question in this thread. Suffice it to say that after a lifetime of believing the Israelis "respond", I have now changed my mind.

For an alternative to the mainstream on the Middle-East, try:

brewerstroupe.blogspot.com/

Cheers.

[pyshnov]

There appeared a short article today giving additional facts about pro-Israeli pressure on academia, particularly pressure in recent academic appointments: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/21/disputes

[shahid]

open discussion about israel, well interesting one. the misuse of power is not the single solution of conflicts. special consideration,concentration, is reqiured to talk about this question that why U.S people hesitate to talk about israel.

[chronicle_moderator]

I know as well as anyone how hard it is to discuss US policies toward Israel. Not long ago some of my colleagues here at Harvard signed a petition calling for a boycott of corporations supplying Israel with material used in the occupation of the West Bank. I was asked to sign but I did not because I had some questions about the premises of the petition. But then, as many people know, Lawrence Summers, who was then the president here, attacked the signers and said their action was anti-semitic "in effect if not in intention." He made this statement, moreover, at the morning prayer service in Memorial Church.

Many of us here immediately spoke in defense of the signers, insisting that their expression of political opinion should not be equated with anti-semitism. But the president's statement had a freezing effect on the university. What junior faculty member, for example, who might face an ad hoc tenure promotion committee chaired by the president would want to be on record saying anything even remotely critical of Israel? Better to play it safe.

I have travelled in Israel many times. I have taught and lectured there. I treasure collegial friendships with Israelis and Palestinians (and with Palestinians who are Israeli citizens). I am always impressed with the freedom and openess of expression I find there. One need only read the editorials in Ha-Aretz to see this. Opinions are voiced in Israel that, if expressed here, would draw immediate fire from American Jewish watchdog groups.

After the colossal crimes against the Jewsih people committed in the memory of many of us, no one wants to be called an anti-semite - either inentional or in effect - by anyone, let alone the president of his own university. Even now, two years after the Summers chapel talk, I sense an awkward queasiness among my colleagues on the subject. I am sure some of this same dynamic is at work on countless other campuses.

Why is is difficult to discuss Israel? In part because those - presidents and deans in particular - whose principal responsibility is to foster an atmosphere of open discussion have not only not done that job. With their antennae sensitive to many outside groups - alumni, political leaders, donors - they have sometimes made matters worse, simply by choosing the safe path. 

I look forward to the day when one can be supportive or critical of Israel - or Iran or Hamas - without having one's intelligence or motives impuned. But that day will not come automatically. It will come only when all of us in academia, including the top leadership, make it their daily business to remember that etrnal vigilence is the price of liberty.

-- Harvey Cox, Hollis Professor of Divinity, Harvard University

[solly]

Debate in South Africa stifled by Jewish interests:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378459829&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[chronicle_moderator]

Abraham H. Foxman responds:

Alan Wolfe's essay on "Free Speech, Israel and Jewish Illiberalism" is deeply troubling on a number of levels.  Professor Wolfe offers an outrageous indictment of pro-Israel forces for closing their ears, minds and hearts to any dissent or alternative thinking on fundamental questions about Israel.  He reaches this conclusion largely based on assumptions and innuendo stemming from the brouhaha over the decision by the Polish consulate in New York to cancel the Tony Judt lecture, and actions supposedly taken by the Anti-Defamation League and others in forcing the cancellation.  Complete with the cover illustration of one man gagging another, Wolfe leaves behind a damning portrait of pro-Israel groups that presumes their ability to not only control the debate on Israel, but to stifle all dissent.

Let's start with ADL's role in the Judt affair.  Like the academics who authored the letter of protest, Professor Wolfe mischaracterizes and overstates our role in the cancellation of Judt's talk and questions our motives without attempting to ascertain the facts or even listen to our side of the story.

A member of our staff called the consulate to ask whether the talk was being sponsored by the Polish government.  Having been told it was not, for us the matter was over.  In answer to the consul general's question about why we were interested, we explained our concerns about Mr. Judt's positions on Israel.  Any action taken by the consulate as a result was theirs and theirs alone.  We did not ask anyone to cancel the event.  Yet we have been tarred by Judt's supporters as having attempted to "pressure," "threaten" and "intimidate" the consulate.

Professor Wolfe takes ADL and other groups to the woodshed for being "not even willing to let critics of Israel speak."  He cites a litany of examples of prominent Jews supposedly using their "extraordinary" power to stifle criticism of Israel.  But this argument is foolhardy – not only because it plays into stereotypes about Jewish control, but also because it denies the fundamental right of Israel's supporters to speak out in defense of Israel.

There is also a whiff of hypocrisy in this line of reasoning.  There have been many instances in recent memory, for example, where Palestinian supporters have attempted to deny platforms to pro-Israeli speakers both on and off campus -- notwithstanding the frequent and odious calls for boycotts against Israeli academics and institutions.

Where were Professors Mark Lilla, Richard Sennett, Judt, Wolfe and their co-signers when former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was prevented from speaking at Concordia University in Montreal?  Where were they when ADL was called on to cancel an appearance by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman at a function in Los Angeles? Where were they when the Muslim author of a Jewish-Muslim interfaith book project sponsored by the American Jewish Committee was denounced and vilified by Muslim clerics and Muslim-American organizations?  Where were they when pressure was recently applied on the administration of Brandeis University to dismiss a well-known professor?  They did not speak out; indeed, their voices were nowhere to be heard.

Professor Wolfe also argues that "organizations such as the ADL ... ought to be less concerned with policing ideas and more preoccupied with promoting them."  How outrageous.  This, after all, is not the Soviet Union!  We believe that in America, the debate over Israel and American foreign policy in the Middle East will continue to be shaped by a well-informed American public that is able to listen to all sides of a debate and form its own conclusions.

Finally, we were outraged by the Chronicle's decision to illustrate the Wolfe article, on the cover and then throughout the article, with extreme images suggesting that Americans cannot speak on the subject of Israel.  Neither the reality in this country nor Mr. Wolfe's piece makes this kind of extreme claim.  The illustrations are demagoguery and are unbecoming to a serious publication.

Far from closing our ears to critics of Israel, we are listening intently – responding when necessary, while also seriously listening for alternative ideas and voices that might lead to a cessation of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities and a resumption of negotiations toward a final settlement.  Certainly, the life and death issues at stake in the Middle East conflict are far more serious and important than one academic's misguided and self-serving campaign to establish himself the victim of a so-called "all-powerful" Jewish establishment.

--Abraham H. Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League

[solly]

Foxman and the ADL don’t seem to get it. The “whiff of hypocrisy” is more than evident in Foxman’s reply without recourse to any other document.
Consider:
“Far from closing our ears to critics of Israel, we are listening intently – responding when necessary, while also seriously listening for alternative ideas and voices”

Why then was the phone call made at all?

Furthermore, the phone call was not without pressure:

“Polish Consul General Krzysztof Kasprzyk acknowledged he acted after receiving calls that day from “maybe four” organizations and also individuals expressing concern about Judt’s appearance — among them the ADL and the American Jewish Committee.”
 http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13150

“The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure,” said Krzysztof Kasprzyk, the Polish consul-general”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3561-2460107,00.html


Far from encouraging debate, the ADL is in the vanguard of those desperately trying to impose censorship on the Internet:
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Internet_75/4806_75.htm

Efforts to cloak legitimate criticism as “hate speech” is a Trojan Horse, a thinly disguised attempt to outlaw criticism of Israel and the legitimate exercise of historical enquiry.
Attempts to define “Hate Speech” are purely arbitrary and lead to absurdity. Should one be censured for stating “George Bush is an amoral warmonger”? How about: “Anti-Semites are animals”. Doesn’t “Jews are the chosen race” imply something rather nasty about non-Jews?

That Freedom of speech implies the tolerance of extreme views is axiomatic. Any attempt to stifle debate is counter-productive. The imprisonment of Irving, Zundel, Rudolf et al has stimulated the interest of many people who would otherwise never have heard of them – just as Foxman has stimulated interest in Tony Judt.

Israel’s supporters are not averse to propagandizing their point of view as evidenced by this study document produced by The Luntz Research Companies:
http://electronicintifada.net/artman/uploads/luntzwexneranalysis.pdf

Media bias in favor of Israel is documented:

“During the conflict Palestinian children have consistently made up a disproportionately large number of Palestinian deaths. In this first year children’s deaths accounted for 24% of the Palestinians killed, while children’s deaths accounted for 17% of Israelis killed.
During this time, ABC reported on 56 Israeli children’s deaths (including repetitions in later newscasts) and 19 Palestinian children’s deaths – 200% of Israeli children and 15% of Palestinian children, a ratio of 13.8 to 1.
CBS reported on 37 Israeli children’s deaths (including repetitions) and 27 Palestinian children’s deaths – 132% of Israeli children’s deaths and 21% of Palestinian children’s deaths, a ratio of 6.4 to 1.
NBC reported on 45 Israeli children’s deaths (including repetitions) and 17 Palestinian children’s deaths – 161% of Israeli children and 13% of Palestinian children’s deaths, a ratio of 12.4 to 1.
Collectively, the networks reported on an average of 46 Israeli children’s deaths – 164% of the Israeli children killed – and 21 Palestinian children’s deaths – 16% of the Palestinian children killed. In other words, the networks reported on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate 10.2 times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.
To understand the pattern of network news coverage of children’s deaths, it is useful to compare the number of deaths reported to the actual number that took place. While repeated coverage of Israeli children’s deaths creates an impression of a higher number of Israeli victims than there actually were, omissions of the majority of Palestinian children’s deaths considerably under-represents the number of Palestinian child victims.
Comparing the day-by-day reporting of children’s deaths to the actual daily death toll reveals an additional dimension of the distortion. In this comparison, we discover that the reports on Palestinian children’s deaths followed the curve for Israeli children’s deaths, rather than the much steeper curve of their actual death count.
This finding underscores the tendency by all three networks to report a fictional situation in which Israeli and Palestinian deaths occur at more or less the same rate, and illustrates the substantial gap between the reality of Palestinian fatalities and the coverage of them. It suggests that the desire to appear ‘balanced’ is too often prioritized above the need for accuracy.”
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/net-report.html

In view of the extraordinary success of the hasbara to date, Foxman was perhaps unwise to draw attention to it.

[marc_mayerson]

The unseen hand of the Jews.  Controlling the media.  Controlling the banks.  Controlling the wars.  Controlling the negative discussions about Israel!  Is there any limit to this sneaky people's powers?  Stay tuned to the Chronicle for more breaking news on this international Zionist conspiracy!  Next week:  "Why can't we talk about the ingredients in matzo?"

[pyshnov]

marc_mayerson, you have made a witty argument. For the whole minute I could not get it: I am far removed from the tales of the past. But, of course, you refer to the completely unreasonable, malicious proposition that Jews add Christian blood to matzos.

Now, listen please. The proposition of the God-promissed land, that has been given active life outside of the Bible, is as unreasonable and as malicious as the one above. It has resulted in much more injustice and bloodshed than the one above.

I think that most people who talk in this discussion wish to avoid listening to this kind of wit and this type of argumentation. That Jews exercise the control over the media (just by the overwhelming ownership and the numbers in key positions there) and even have managed to put some critics in jail, - these are facts, not a libel. Currently, the control over the media works as a "solution" for the Israeli problem.

The new developments, however, show that some Jews are trying to resist unreasonableness of such "solution", trying to resist the hysterical calls for unity, resist the mountain of unreasonableness and absurdity that pro-Israeli lobby has been building for decades. People want the lawful, not the unreasonable solution. They say it's not satisfactory that a lot of money and military power support the unreasonable, unlawful solution. They also, in the back of their mind, know that the bubble will burst no matter what.
----------
I happen to believe that counting victims can not be productive, simply because Israel is a Friend and its every action passes as a "punishment", nothing more than this.

But, if we set aside the problem of "violence in the Middle East", does anything else remain? Yes, of course, one thing remains. It's the occupation. And how the problem stands here? Now, I would like to remind everybody that practically every peace agreement and the end of war was achieved when there was no complete cessation of hostilities. Violence continued sometimes long after the peace treaty was signed. Why, then, do we take seriously Israeli arguments requiring complete quiet before they give up the occupation?
----------
One more historical lesson. Grishka Rasputin was called by the Russian court "Our Friend". With the cult of Rasputin, unreasonable as it was, Russia went down. Should Americans beware of unreasonable friends who created a cult? A cult in the full meaning of the word, with hysterical devotion, collecting money-money, advocacy bordering on brainwashing, and virtually anything else, you name it, that routinely found as an attribute of cults.

[martinkimel]

Pyshov:

You write:  "The proposition of the God-promissed [sic] land, that has been given active life outside of the Bible, is as unreasonable and as malicious as the one above."

Why is that?  The Muslims believe they have God-given entitlement to Jerusalem.  I don't hear you inveighing against that.  They believe they have the God-given right to Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis don't even allow the practice of ANY other religion there (contrast that with Israel). And nonMuslims aren't even permitted in Mecca and Medina.  Saudis don't allow women to drive.  In most Muslim countries, there are no laws against husbands raping their wives. Why aren't you out protesting any of the above?

Now, Jews don't say they're the "chosen race."  Our religion says we're the Chosen People, meaning God chose us to receive the Torah.  Why is that so offensive to you?  Jews don't say that nonbelievers will go to Hell, but Christianity does hold that.  So which religion is less tolerant?

It is this obsession with the Jews (we control the media, according to you; it's a "fact") and with Israel, to the exclusion of all else, that leads some critics of Israel to deserve the label of anti-Semite. 

Sorry, but that's a "fact."

[pyshnov]

martinkimel, items listed in your second paragraph are not violations of law, national or international. Let them believe it's all God-given.

Your third paragraph: I am probably not offended by a strictly religious meaning of "Chosen People" (I think it also a Chosen race), although I always wonder just how far these words alone could lead Jewish nationalists. And that's what matters. So, I hate these words. I wish every people would believe themselves God-chosen, or... none.

Communists say that religion must be tolerant. But, it's a slogan word that does not say where it starts or ends, what it is and what it isn't. Intolerance, for me, means only infringing upon the rights of those who do not belong to this religion (it's much more complicated in "multi-cultural" countries). In Jerusalem, my friends said they were spat on by religious Jews when driving on Saturday. I never went to these streets on Saturday in a car (I don't drive myself).

The label anti-Semite is a label. Some Jews had put on the Internet a list of eight thousands names of Jews, as they say - anti-Semites, who criticize Israel.

There are some very shameful things that you would have to defend or do yourself if you refuse to take a second look at what is going on.

[not_a_gradstudent1]

For the whole minute I could not get it: I am far removed from the tales of the past. But, of course, you refer to the completely unreasonable, malicious proposition that Jews add Christian blood to matzos.

Now, listen please. The proposition of the God-promissed land, that has been given active life outside of the Bible, is as unreasonable and as malicious as the one above. It has resulted in much more injustice and bloodshed than the one above.

How much more? Do you quantify that by number of people killed/displaced as a result of the proposition? Or the amount of time that proponents of the proposition can and do use it to carry out acts of injustice and bloodshed? Are good data even available on the extent of injustice and bloodshed caused by blood libels?

[solly]

The long arm of Abraham extends to art. It seems that Jewish characters must only be portrayed as nice:

'Anti-Jewish' Turkish film pulled from US theaters

"In an October 19 letter to Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to the US, ADL leaders expressed concern at "the incendiary anti-Jewish and anti-American themes and characters in the film" and pointed to previous inquiries about the wide availability of anti-Semitic publications in Turkey.

The letter was signed by ADL national chair Barbara B. Balser and national director Abraham Foxman, who did not receive a reply from the ambassador. "
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378491023&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull