Tag: Palestine

On Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Palestine, and the Left

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose candidacy I’ve championed and worked for since May, had a bad moment late last week. Appearing on the reboot of Firing Line, Ocasio-Cortez was asked by conservative host Margaret Hoover to explain her stance on Israel. The question left Ocasio-Cortez tongue-tied and equivocating. Here was the exchange: MH: You, in the campaign, made one tweet, or made one statement, that referred to a killing by Israeli soldiers of civilians in Gaza and called it a “massacre,” which became a little bit controversial. But I haven’t seen anywhere — what is your position on Israel? AOC: Well, I believe absolutely in Israel’s right to exist. I am a proponent of a two-state solution. And for me, it’s not — this […]

Do the Jews Not Belong in the United States?

My new column at Salon on that crazy comment from Joe Biden that I talked about the other day. Only now I look a little further into it: A country that once offered itself as a haven to persecuted Jews across the world now tells its Jews that in the event of some terrible outbreak of anti-Semitism they should… what? Plan on boarding the next plane to Tel Aviv? It’s like some crazy fiction from Philip Roth, except that when Roth contemplated an exodus in “Operation Shylock,” it was to imagine the Jews fleeing Israel for Poland. … The reason no one has been ruffled by his statement, I suspect, has less to do with any special sensitivity to Jewish experience […]

Nakba, the Night of Bad Dreams

Last night, I read S. Yizhar’s Khirbet Khizeh. It’s a short novel about the Israelis’ roundup and expulsion of Arab villagers from a single village in 1948. Published in Israel in 1949, it’s a classic piece of modernist prose, veering within a single paragraph from the most biblical cadences and august references to the shit talk of soldiers. It’s also beautiful prose, observing the most incidental details—about animals, vegetation, dress, vomit—that never leave you once you read them. It also gave me a night of bad dreams. Maybe it’s because I’ve just come out of my six-month immersion in the Arendt/Eichmann archive, but it’s almost impossible—even if you’re the most fastidious of scholars or committed of Zionists—not to read Khirbet Khizeh without […]

What Every Reporter Should Be Asking John Kerry Between Now and April 18

US Secretary of State John Kerry, April 18, 2013: I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting. I think we have some period of time – a year to year-and-a-half to two years, or it’s over. (h/t Yousef Munayyer) Between now and April 18, every single reporter should be asking Kerry how much closer Israel and Palestine are to reaching a two-state solution, and what the US will do differently if, as seems likely, it reaches the date when by his own word the window for achieving such a solution has permanently closed.

The Cary Nelson Standard of HireFire (Updated) (Updated again)

In his latest interview on the Salaita Affair with Huffington Post, Cary Nelson returns repeatedly to the claim that Salaita is “obsessive” and “obsessive-compulsive” on the topic of Israel and Palestine. Given, as Nelson acknowledges in the interview (indeed, insists on it), that Israel/Palestine is one of Salaita’s areas of academic research, it’s a strange charge to level at a scholar. Imagine any of the following statements: That Einstein fellow: He’s obsessive on this relativity question. Firehire him! That Arendt gal: She’s obsessive-compulsive about the problem of evil. Keeps coming back to it. Dehire her! That Nelson fellow: He’s obsessive about the Salaita fellow. He even says he’s been following Salaita’s tweets for months. Firehire him! Anyone worth her salt […]

But for the boycott there would be academic freedom

When people say that the ASA boycott violates academic freedom they seem to assume that academic freedom in Israel/Palestine exists. But for the boycott, goes the argument, there would be academic freedom. But as this fact sheet by the Institute for Middle East Understanding suggests, that is not the case for Palestinians. One of our most minimal definitions of any kind of freedom, academic or otherwise, is the absence of external impediments to the physical movement of our bodies. What Palestinian students and scholars routinely face is the presence of external impediments to the physical movement of their bodies. Here are some highlights: Due to Israeli restrictions imposed in cooperation with the government of Egypt, it is extremely difficult for […]

Peter Beinart Speaks Truth About BDS

Peter Beinart is a liberal Zionist, a firm believer in the State of Israel, and a staunch critic of BDS. And this is what he has to say in Haaretz: But the tactical brilliance of BDS becomes clearer with every passing month. At a time when their leaders are bitterly divided and their people are geographically fragmented, BDS has united Palestinians like nothing else in recent memory. For the many young Palestinians fed up with both Fatah and Hamas, it offers a form of political action untainted by corruption, theocracy, collaboration and internal repression….And by relying on international activists—not Palestinian politicians—it universalizes the Palestinian struggle… But there’s one more factor that makes BDS so tactically shrewd: It exploits the mendacity […]

Columbia University to NYS Legislature: Back Off!

About 75 Nearly 100 members of the Columbia University faculty have issued a forceful response to the New York State Legislature bill that would make it illegal for universities and colleges to use public money to fund faculty involvement in organizations like the ASA. Signatories include such noted scholars as Lila Abu-Lughod, Eric Foner, Akeel Bilgrami, Jean Cohen, Victoria de Grazia, Alice Kessler-Harris, Mae Ngai, Todd Gitlin, Judith Butler, and Patricia Williams. Signatories also include prominent opponents of the ASA boycott, who nevertheless understand the threat this bill poses. Here are some excerpts from their letter: These bills aim to punish political speech and association of academics generally, and specifically target the viewpoint expressed by that speech and association. Both […]

An Unoriginal Thought About the Israel/Palestine Conflict

We seem to be entering a new phase of the Israel/Palestine conflict, in the US and perhaps elsewhere. As Israel loses increasing control over the debate, its organized and institutional defenders have to resort to ever more desperate and coercive measures to control the debate. As they resort to ever more desperate and coercive measures to control the debate, they lose the hip, politically tolerant, embodiment-of-social-justice aura—the Middle East’s only democracy, the country is one big kibbutz, etc.—that traditionally helped them control the debate. Historically speaking, that’s not a good position for self-described liberal democratic regimes to be in.

Jewfros in Palestine

Tablet has a moving piece by Samantha Shokin, a Brooklyn-based writer, on how a semester in Israel helped change the way she felt about herself, particularly her bodily self-image as a Jewish woman. Shokin writes: I spent a lifetime hating my Jewish hair—straightening it, covering it, or otherwise finding ways to diminish its presence. A trip to Israel is what it took for me to realize my hair was wonderful all its own, and much more than just an accessory. Shokin does a wonderful job describing how her hair was caught up with her feelings of awkwardness, shame, and exclusion, how difficult it was as an adolescent to contend with images of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera from the vantage […]

The New McCarthyites: BDS, Its Critics, and Academic Freedom

As the attacks on the BDS movement and the ASA boycott escalate, the arguments grow wilder. It’s no longer enough, it seems, to make unfounded claims that the academic boycott violates academic freedom. The new line of march is that mere advocacy of the boycott is itself a violation of academic freedom. What’s more, it’s not crazies who are peddling this claim; as Haaretz reports, it’s coming from the heart of the academic establishment. “The mere calling for a boycott will impede the free flow of ideas,” Russell Berman, a comparative literature professor at Stanford University and a past Modern Language Association president, said on the conference call. “The calling of a boycott will have a chilling effect on academic life.” […]

A Very Elite Backlash

The speed and scale of the backlash against the ASA boycott have been formidable. But the backlash has a curious feature: it is a very elite backlash, as this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education makes clear. It is spearheaded almost entirely by university presidents (not exactly my go-to sources of moral instruction on academic freedom), government officials, and institutional actors like the American Council on Education and the Association of American Universities. If you want to understand the sources of that elite backlash, particularly among university presidents, Bard College President Leon Botstein—by no means a progressive on this issue—breaks it down in that Chronicle piece. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and a boycott opponent, said calls from alumni […]

Are Israeli Universities Critics of or Collaborators with the Israeli Government?

Critics of the ASA academic boycott often claim that the boycott is illegitimate because it targets Israeli universities, which are the site of some of the greatest criticism of the Israeli government and support for the Palestinian cause. As prominent scholar and former ASA president Shelley Fisher Fishkin said: Israeli universities are often at the forefront of fostering dialogue between Arabs and Jews, of educating the future leaders of Arab universities, and of providing the next generation with the tools of critical thinking that can allow them to construct a society more equitable and just than that of their parents. It’s a little more complicated. Here are just some of the facts about the Israeli academy that Fishkin failed to […]

Does the ASA Boycott Violate Academic Freedom? A Roundtable

Does the American Studies Association (ASA) boycott of Israeli academic institutions violate academic freedom? According to the presidents of Harvard, Yale, Indiana University (see my comment on that university at the end of this post), and numerous other universities across the United States, the answer is yes. The question is: Why? I asked my Facebook friends that question. A bunch of people—some in favor of the ASA boycott, others opposed, others undecided—answered. I thought the discussion was worth reprinting here. Fair warning: it is a fairly narrow discussion. We were not considering the pros and cons of the boycott or where justice lies in the current Israel-Palestine conflict. We were simply trying to figure out whether and how the boycott […]

Israel v. Palestine, Plessy v. Ferguson

Haaretz (3/13/13): Starting on Monday, certain buses running from the West Bank into central Israel will have separate lines for Jews and Arabs. The Afikim bus company will begin operating Palestinian-only bus lines from the checkpoints to Gush Dan to prevent Palestinians from boarding buses with Jewish passengers. Palestinians are not allowed to enter settlements, and instead board buses from several bus stops on the Trans-Samaria highway. Last November, Haaretz reported that the Transportation Ministry was looking into such a plan due to pressure from the late mayor of Ariel, Ron Nahman, and the head of the Karnei Shomron Local Council. They said residents had complained that Palestinians on their buses were a security risk. The buses will begin operating […]

In Which the NY Times Suddenly Decides It Respects Noam Chomsky

The Times ran a serious and substantive story two days ago about Noam Chomsky’s attempt to persuade Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to free a judge from house arrest. Look out for tomorrow’s follow-up story, in which Ethan Bronner devotes a respectful 600 words to Chomsky’s thoughts on the Gaza Flotilla.

You Are Not Historians!

Benny Morris gets called a racist and a fascist by a crowd of Arab and Muslim students—one of whom shouts, “You are not an historian”—and naturally his thoughts drift to Nazi Germany. Because you remember all those Brownshirts marching through the streets of Berlin, shouting at Fritz Stern, Peter Gay, and Felix Gilbert, “You are not historians!” Don’t you?