by Mitchell Plitnick
I’d like to pose a question. Do you believe that someone who writes the following letter should be forced out of his position as chaplain at an Ivy League university?
To the Editor:
Deborah E. Lipstadt makes far too little of the relationship between Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza and growing anti-Semitism in Europe and beyond.
The trend to which she alludes parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank.
As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel’s patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question.
(Rev.) BRUCE M. SHIPMAN
Groton, Conn., Aug. 21, 2014
One can, to be sure, disagree with the opinion Bruce Shipman, a former chaplain from Yale, expressed—I certainly do. Anti-Semitism is not the same as opposition to Israeli policies, the two are quite distinct and plenty of Jew-haters fully support even more aggressive and brutal policies either because they hate Muslims and Arabs more than Jews or because they have some apocalyptic vision of where such Jewish behavior might take the Jews.
Anti-Semitism does not increase due to Israel’s behavior. Anti-Semitic activity might, as haters see an opportunity to cloak their hate in something else. But bigotry has a life of its own. More to the point, Israelis will not behave like “good Jews” in order to stem a theoretical rising tide of anti-Semitism. That’s not why Israel should end its occupation, should end its siege of Gaza, and should recognize, with full faith, that Palestinians have the same national, civil and human rights as Israeli Jews. Politics doesn’t work this way, but civil society should be pushing for these things because they are a moral imperative. And Israel should pursue such a course because it is the only way its citizens will ever know peace and security.
So, yes, I think Shipman was wrong. But he was hardly expressing hatred towards Jews. He was speaking out of obvious concern for both Israelis and Palestinians and a hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. He may have been wrong about Israeli actions causing anti-Semitism, but he is not the only person who believes this and there is room for reasonable debate on that point. In any case, he was certainly not saying that Israel’s actions justified anti-Semitism. And yet, he was forced to resign.
Is this really where we’ve ended up? Yes. Ideas are fully policed on this issue. Academia, which is precisely the place that disagreements, and especially controversial ideas, are supposed to be debated with civility, has become one of the most heavily policed arenas. The recent controversy at the University of Illinois, where Professor Steven Salaita was “de-hired” because of his outspoken statements on Twitter about Israel’s massive onslaught on Gaza, has now grown to the point where it is threatening the university’s administration. Yet they have not reversed their decision to date.
It’s not like controversial views on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict are under such attack. Thane Rosenbaum, for example, called on Israel to kill Palestinian civilians. His op-ed in the Wall Street Journal generated a lot of controversy, but his position at New York University’s School of Law was never in danger, and I wouldn’t want it to be.
Opinions, even hateful ones, need to be out in the open. How can they otherwise be countered? Instead, when it comes to Israel, we have gone entirely in the other direction, but only on one side of the question.
Bruce Shipman, apparently, resigned “voluntarily,” not wanting to create or be in the middle of further controversy at Yale. But there never should have been any such pressure on him. There is no conceivable stretch that can turn what Shipman wrote, regardless of how much anyone disagrees with him, into hate speech. Short of that, any individual should be able to express an opinion. That is especially true about community leaders, which school chaplains obviously are, and the academic world.
So enough with the false allegations of anti-Semitism, which are insulting to those like myself who have experienced physical violence from anti-Semitism. Enough with the extremists supporting the worst Israeli policies who—apparently knowing that their case cannot withstand open debate—threaten and pressure those who raise opposing opinions (I have received death threats from such people as well).
It’s high time for everyone to agree that ideas can and should be debated. Islamophobes and others who do not acknowledge Palestinians’ basic human rights have a national platform with FOX News. More legitimate defenders of Israeli policies and those who are deeply opposed to those policies should also be able to voice their views in public. Everyone who is interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict should agree with this fair and just principle. The only ones who can’t, it would seem, are the naysayers who oppose legitimate debate. I wonder why.
To Mike Kearney, you make a good point here, which also says that those who use the antisemitism label towards anyone who isn’t Jewish, are themselves racists. I wonder, (though I don’t indulge in the M.S.M.), the silence of the usual individuals in the U.S. over the latest Gaza turkey shoot. Could it be that they themselves are taken-aback by the killing, destruction, inflicted by the I.D.F., save for a few of the old ultra-rich men, whom I might add, got their fortunes from every other ethnic peoples in this country, legally or otherwise? Oh, I guess that makes me an antisemitic too, because I dare ask this question?
According to the author, ‘Thane Rosenbaum…called on Israel to kill Palestinian civilians…but his position at New York University’s School of Law was never in danger, and I wouldn’t want it to be.’
The mind reels. This man supports the bloody murder of civilians and no one seems to get outraged. Apart from the barbarity of the man’s stance, we can only wonder if his advice includes the Israeli Palestinians? Of course in the eyes of the Israeli state the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are not consequential.
And then there is the whole noise-machine about the distinction between criticizing Israel and criticizing Jews and criticizing the man in the moon. Israel says it is the Jewish state (curiously with 20 % Palestinian population, mostly Muslim). Right. Here the game begins: does Israel represent all Jews around the world even if individual Jews might disclaim the association. If so, then when Israel is criticized all Jews are, which might rightly be called anti-Jewish prejudice because no distinctions are made between the Jews who support Israel and those who don’t. Where does it begin and where does it end? Or is someone being anti-Jewish only towards the Jews who support Israel, so the others need not feel accused of anything. If criticism of Israel is regarded as anti-Jewish, the obvioius defence is that, no, it is not anti-Jewish but relates only to Israel. Yes, but if Israel is the Jewish state, the criticism must still be aimed at all Jews…and on and on. The parameters if the categories are as allusive fluid as the final borders of Israel are. (Why does everyone insist on calling it ‘the STATE of Israel? Maybe because it is indeed the 51st state of the USA. No, there is probably a weasely judicial argument hidden in the phrase, which eludes me.)
But it’s hard to argue that Israel has not just exappropriated about 1000 square acres to build more colonies in the Occupied Territories. If that were done to you, I would not fault you for fighting back…violently if need be.
But I think the author said it himself: the activities defined as anti-semitic really have increased, under cover sometimes of exasperation with Israel’s arrogance towards Palestinians. This has allowed recruitment of people who otherwise have been content to let Israel define that what it is doing is just normal self-defense. Since it no longer looks that way to many observers, one might indeed fall in with people who have another agenda than peace in the mideast, without realizing that they do not even want an Israel at all. Isn’t that possibly what this minister was trying to articulate?
Back in my day as a radio interviewer, the American Nazi leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, told me of his political evolution. “I used to be a liberal,” said he. Rockwell was a rarity in his time. Today the liberal-to-totalitarian model can be seen in every city and in every land. Setting aside the boilerplate about Israel being “the only democracy in the Middle East” and examining the behavior of Israelis who have shrugged off the idealism of their youth, one is saddened to see, and to hear of, Israeli thugs roaming the streets in shirts and caps advertising their ultra-nationalistic sympathy for the Nazi revival in Europe. Their quarry: Palestinians and Israelis who carry any marker of membership in the peace movement. The beatings and the intimidation they administer are no different from those dealt by the SA in the streets of Germany circa 1933. If Israel is a democracy – and I doubt that a people as steeped in hatred of the indigenes as they can be democratic – they are like the antebellum Americans – citizens of a white republic.
Criticism of Israel’s brutal, aggressive policies toward the West Bank, Gaza, and E. Jerusalem is not anti-Semitic, period. In the US, such criticism is part and parcel of free speech, a right enshrined in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. Israel and its supporters would love to have this criticism stricken from the 1st Amendment; however, that was not what the nation’s Founders had intended. The Zionist Entity shouldn’t be exempt from criticisms of its behavior toward others; no other nation is exempt.