Can Corporatized Universities Allow Criticism Of Israel?
Screen Shot 2015-10-05 at 9.43.53 PM
The University of California is seeking
to ban criticism of Israel. This is a widespread phenomenon in the United
States, as attested by
two new
reports and cases like that of Steven Salaita, author of
Uncivil Rights: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom.
Salaita was fired by the University of Illinois for criticizing Israel on
Twitter. Norman Finkelstein had been denied tenure by DePaul University for
criticizing Israel. William Robinson was almost driven out at UC Santa
Barbara for refusing to "repent" after criticizing Israel. Joseph Massad at
Columbia had a similar experience.
Why, in a country that stretches "freedom of speech" to the point of
covering the bribery of politicians, should it be acceptable to criticize
the United States but not a tiny, distant country only just created in 1948?
And why should such censorship reach even into institutions that usually
pile "academic freedom" on top of "freedom of speech" as an argument against
censorship?
First and foremost, I think, is the nature of Israel. It's a nation
practicing apartheid and genocide in the twenty-first century using U.S.
funding and weaponry. It can't persuade people of the acceptability of these
policies in open debate. It can only continue its crimes by insisting that -
precisely as a government serving one ethnic group only - any criticism
amounts to the threat of apartheid and genocide known as "anti-Semitism."
Second, I think, is the subservience of the contemporary degenerate
educational institution, which serves the wealthy donor, not the exploration
of human intellect. When wealthy donors demand that "anti-Semitism" be
stamped out, so it is. (And how can one object without being "anti-Semitic"
or appearing to dispute that there actually is real anti-Semitism in the
world and that it is as immoral as hatred of any other group.)
Third, the crackdown on criticizing Israel is a response to the success of
such criticism and to the efforts of the BDS (boycotts, divestment, and
sanctions)
movement. Israeli author Manfred Gerstenfeld published openly in the
Jerusalem Post a strategy for making an example of a few U.S. professors in
order to "diminish the threat of boycotts."
Salaita called his book
Uncivil Rights because the accusations of unacceptable speech typically take
the form of proclaiming a need to protect civility. Salaita didn't tweet or
otherwise communicate anything actually anti-Semitic. He tweeted and
otherwise communicated many statements opposing anti-Semitism. But he
criticized Israel and cursed at the same time. And to compound the sin, he
used humor and sarcasm. Such practices are enough to get you convicted in a
U.S. Court of Indignation without any careful examination of whether the
sarcastic cursing actually expressed hatred or, on the contrary, expressed
justifiable outrage. Reading Salaita's offending tweets in the context of
all his other ones exonerates him of anti-Semitism while leaving him clearly
guilty of "anti-Semitism," that is: criticizing the Israeli government.
This criticism can take the form of criticizing Israeli settlers. Salaita
writes in his book:
block quote
"There are nearly half a million Jewish settlers on the West Bank. Their
population currently grows at double the rate of other Israelis. They use 90
percent of the West Bank's water; the 3.5 million Palestinians of the
territory make due with the remaining 10 percent. They travel on Jewish-only
highways while Palestinians wait for hours at checkpoints (with no guarantee
of passing through, even when they are injured or giving birth). They
regularly assault women and children; some bury alive the natives. They
vandalize homes and shops. They run over pedestrians with their cars. They
restrict farmers from their land. They squat on hilltops that don't belong
to them. They firebomb houses and kill babies. They bring with them a
high-tech security force largely composed of conscripts to maintain this
hideous apparatus."
block quote end
One could read even such a longer-than-twitter criticism and imagine certain
additions to it. But, reading the whole book from which I've quoted it,
would eliminate the possibility of fantasizing that Salaita is, in this
passage, advocating vengeance or violence or condemning settlers because of
their religion or ethnicity or equating all settlers with each other except
in so far as they are part of an operation of ethnic cleansing. Salaita does
not excuse either side of the conflict but criticizes the idea that there is
a conflict in Palestine with two equal sides:
block quote
"Since 2000, Israelis have killed 2,060 Palestinian children, while
Palestinians have killed 130 Israeli children. The overall death count
during this period is over 9,000 Palestinians and 1,190 Israelis. Israel has
violated at least seventy-seven UN resolutions and numerous provisions of
the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Israel has imposed hundreds of settlements on
the West Bank, while Palestinians inside Israel increasingly are squeezed
and continue to be internally displaced. Israel has demolished nearly thirty
thousand Palestinian homes as a matter of policy. Palestinians have
demolished zero Israeli homes. At present more than six thousand
Palestinians languish in Israeli prisons, including children; no Israeli
occupies a Palestinian prison."
block quote end
Salaita wants Palestinian land given back to Palestinians, just as he wants
at least some Native American land given back to Native Americans. Such
demands, even when they amount to nothing but compliance with existing laws
and treaties, seem unreasonable or vengeful to certain readers. But what
people imagine education consists of if not the consideration of ideas that
at first seem unreasonable is beyond me. And the notion that returning
stolen land must involve violence is a notion added to the proposal by the
reader.
However, there is at least one area in which Salaita is clearly and openly
accepting of violence, and that is the United States military. Salaita wrote
a column criticizing "support the troops" propaganda, in which he said, "My
wife and I often discuss what our son might grow up to accomplish. A
consistent area of disagreement is his possible career choice. She can think
of few things worse than him one day joining the military (in any capacity),
while I would not object to such a decision."
Think about that. Here is someone making a moral argument for opposing
violence in Palestine, and a book-length defense of the importance of this
stand outweighing concerns of comfort or politeness. And he wouldn't so much
as object to his son joining the United States military. Elsewhere in the
book, he notes that U.S. academics "can travel to, say, Tel Aviv University
and pal around with racists and war criminals." Think about that. This is an
American academic writing this while David Petraeus, John Yoo, Condoleezza
Rice, Harold Koh, and dozens of their fellow war criminals teach in U.S.
academia, and not without huge controversy about which Salaita cannot have
avoided hearing. In response to outrage at his criticism of "support the
troops," his then-employer, Virginia Tech, loudly proclaimed its support for
the U.S. military.
The U.S. military acts on the belief, as found in the names of its
operations and weapons as well as in its extended discussions, that the
world is "Indian territory," and that native lives don't matter. A West
Point professor
recently proposed targeting critics of U.S. militarism with death, not just
denial of tenure. And why is such criticism dangerous? Because nothing the
U.S. military does to the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen,
Somalia, Syria, or anywhere else is any more defensible than what the
Israeli military does with its help - and I don't think it would take much
consideration of
the facts for someone like Steven Salaita to realize that.
Can Corporatized Universities Allow Criticism Of Israel? |
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Can Corporatized Universities Allow Criticism Of Israel?
Screen Shot 2015-10-05 at 9.43.53 PM
The University of California is seeking
to ban criticism of Israel. This is a widespread phenomenon in the United
States, as attested by
two new
reports and cases like that of Steven Salaita, author of
Uncivil Rights: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom.
Salaita was fired by the University of Illinois for criticizing Israel on
Twitter. Norman Finkelstein had been denied tenure by DePaul University for
criticizing Israel. William Robinson was almost driven out at UC Santa
Barbara for refusing to "repent" after criticizing Israel. Joseph Massad at
Columbia had a similar experience.
Why, in a country that stretches "freedom of speech" to the point of
covering the bribery of politicians, should it be acceptable to criticize
the United States but not a tiny, distant country only just created in 1948?
And why should such censorship reach even into institutions that usually
pile "academic freedom" on top of "freedom of speech" as an argument against
censorship?
First and foremost, I think, is the nature of Israel. It's a nation
practicing apartheid and genocide in the twenty-first century using U.S.
funding and weaponry. It can't persuade people of the acceptability of these
policies in open debate. It can only continue its crimes by insisting that -
precisely as a government serving one ethnic group only - any criticism
amounts to the threat of apartheid and genocide known as "anti-Semitism."
Second, I think, is the subservience of the contemporary degenerate
educational institution, which serves the wealthy donor, not the exploration
of human intellect. When wealthy donors demand that "anti-Semitism" be
stamped out, so it is. (And how can one object without being "anti-Semitic"
or appearing to dispute that there actually is real anti-Semitism in the
world and that it is as immoral as hatred of any other group.)
Third, the crackdown on criticizing Israel is a response to the success of
such criticism and to the efforts of the BDS (boycotts, divestment, and
sanctions)
movement. Israeli author Manfred Gerstenfeld published openly in the
Jerusalem Post a strategy for making an example of a few U.S. professors in
order to "diminish the threat of boycotts."
Salaita called his book
Uncivil Rights because the accusations of unacceptable speech typically take
the form of proclaiming a need to protect civility. Salaita didn't tweet or
otherwise communicate anything actually anti-Semitic. He tweeted and
otherwise communicated many statements opposing anti-Semitism. But he
criticized Israel and cursed at the same time. And to compound the sin, he
used humor and sarcasm. Such practices are enough to get you convicted in a
U.S. Court of Indignation without any careful examination of whether the
sarcastic cursing actually expressed hatred or, on the contrary, expressed
justifiable outrage. Reading Salaita's offending tweets in the context of
all his other ones exonerates him of anti-Semitism while leaving him clearly
guilty of "anti-Semitism," that is: criticizing the Israeli government.
This criticism can take the form of criticizing Israeli settlers. Salaita
writes in his book:
block quote
"There are nearly half a million Jewish settlers on the West Bank. Their
population currently grows at double the rate of other Israelis. They use 90
percent of the West Bank's water; the 3.5 million Palestinians of the
territory make due with the remaining 10 percent. They travel on Jewish-only
highways while Palestinians wait for hours at checkpoints (with no guarantee
of passing through, even when they are injured or giving birth). They
regularly assault women and children; some bury alive the natives. They
vandalize homes and shops. They run over pedestrians with their cars. They
restrict farmers from their land. They squat on hilltops that don't belong
to them. They firebomb houses and kill babies. They bring with them a
high-tech security force largely composed of conscripts to maintain this
hideous apparatus."
block quote end
One could read even such a longer-than-twitter criticism and imagine certain
additions to it. But, reading the whole book from which I've quoted it,
would eliminate the possibility of fantasizing that Salaita is, in this
passage, advocating vengeance or violence or condemning settlers because of
their religion or ethnicity or equating all settlers with each other except
in so far as they are part of an operation of ethnic cleansing. Salaita does
not excuse either side of the conflict but criticizes the idea that there is
a conflict in Palestine with two equal sides:
block quote
"Since 2000, Israelis have killed 2,060 Palestinian children, while
Palestinians have killed 130 Israeli children. The overall death count
during this period is over 9,000 Palestinians and 1,190 Israelis. Israel has
violated at least seventy-seven UN resolutions and numerous provisions of
the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Israel has imposed hundreds of settlements on
the West Bank, while Palestinians inside Israel increasingly are squeezed
and continue to be internally displaced. Israel has demolished nearly thirty
thousand Palestinian homes as a matter of policy. Palestinians have
demolished zero Israeli homes. At present more than six thousand
Palestinians languish in Israeli prisons, including children; no Israeli
occupies a Palestinian prison."
block quote end
Salaita wants Palestinian land given back to Palestinians, just as he wants
at least some Native American land given back to Native Americans. Such
demands, even when they amount to nothing but compliance with existing laws
and treaties, seem unreasonable or vengeful to certain readers. But what
people imagine education consists of if not the consideration of ideas that
at first seem unreasonable is beyond me. And the notion that returning
stolen land must involve violence is a notion added to the proposal by the
reader.
However, there is at least one area in which Salaita is clearly and openly
accepting of violence, and that is the United States military. Salaita wrote
a column criticizing "support the troops" propaganda, in which he said, "My
wife and I often discuss what our son might grow up to accomplish. A
consistent area of disagreement is his possible career choice. She can think
of few things worse than him one day joining the military (in any capacity),
while I would not object to such a decision."
Think about that. Here is someone making a moral argument for opposing
violence in Palestine, and a book-length defense of the importance of this
stand outweighing concerns of comfort or politeness. And he wouldn't so much
as object to his son joining the United States military. Elsewhere in the
book, he notes that U.S. academics "can travel to, say, Tel Aviv University
and pal around with racists and war criminals." Think about that. This is an
American academic writing this while David Petraeus, John Yoo, Condoleezza
Rice, Harold Koh, and dozens of their fellow war criminals teach in U.S.
academia, and not without huge controversy about which Salaita cannot have
avoided hearing. In response to outrage at his criticism of "support the
troops," his then-employer, Virginia Tech, loudly proclaimed its support for
the U.S. military.
The U.S. military acts on the belief, as found in the names of its
operations and weapons as well as in its extended discussions, that the
world is "Indian territory," and that native lives don't matter. A West
Point professor
recently proposed targeting critics of U.S. militarism with death, not just
denial of tenure. And why is such criticism dangerous? Because nothing the
U.S. military does to the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen,
Somalia, Syria, or anywhere else is any more defensible than what the
Israeli military does with its help - and I don't think it would take much
consideration of
the facts for someone like Steven Salaita to realize that.
Can Corporatized Universities Allow Criticism Of Israel? |
PopularResistance.Or