What Would Mary Beard Do? Bonnie Honig On How a Different Chancellor Might Respond to the Salaita Affair

One of the more difficult challenges in the midst of the Salaita affair is to hold onto the possibility that a university could handle the Israel-Palestine debate in ways that are worthy of a university. Virtually all sides of this debate seem to agree that, of course, Chancellor Wise was going to capitulate to the combination of outraged donors and potent constituencies. I myself have gotten so used to the cycle of call and response—administrators succumbing to donor and political pressure; massive counter-mobilization mounted by students, faculty, staff, and citizens; administrators reversing (if we’re lucky) their decision—that I sometimes forget that administrators need not toggle endlessly between powerful donors and mobilized publics. Political theorist Bonnie Honig, whose letter to Chancellor Wise went viral on Sunday, weighs in as a guest blogger today, meditating on the possibility of a different response from Chancellor Wise. Inspired by the luminous example of the classicist Mary Beard.

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This week, the New Yorker features a great article about the fabulous Mary Beard, a Cambridge Classicist who, in addition to writing many great books and training a great many students, appears on TV and radio in the UK discussing the ancient world and contemporary topics.

Beard, an “older” woman, does not toe the conventional female appearance line:

Beard does not wear makeup and she doesn’t color her abundant gray hair. She dresses casually, with minor eccentricities: purple-rimmed spectacles, gold sneakers. She looks comfortable both in her skin and in her shoes—much more preoccupied with what she is saying than with how she looks as she is saying it.

Her appearance is often the occasion (though not the cause) of rather vicious and awful tweets, emails, or postings. Beard is philosophical about it all. She sees it as a kind of silencing that is gendered:

“It doesn’t much matter what line of argument you take as a woman. If you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it—it’s the fact that you are saying it.” Indeed, Beard goes on, “’Shut up you bitch’ is a fairly common refrain” and these often come with threats, what she refers to as a “predictable menu of rape, bombing, murder, and so forth.” She mildly reported one tweet that had been directed at her: “I’m going to cut off your head and rape it.”

Beard’s response? When one “commenter posted a doctored photograph in which an image of a woman’s genitals was superimposed over Beard’s face,” she posted the image on her blog “and suggested possible responses for her supporters to take, such as flooding the offending message board with Latin poetry. The story made international news, and the message board soon shut down.”

In another “highly publicized incident, Beard retweeted a message she had received from a twenty-year-old university student: ‘You filthy old slut. I bet your vagina is disgusting.’” Asked by the BBC what she would say to the student, Beard replied, “‘I’d take him out for a drink and smack his bottom.’”

In practice, though, she does something a bit different: she writes back to her detractors. and soon discovers they are somehow thwarted in their lives and taking out their frustrations on her. She listens, she may even help out with a problem, and so some sort of relationship takes the place of the prior antagonism; “often, she receives not only an apology from them but also a poignant explanation.”

For example:

The university student, after apologizing online, came to Cambridge and took Beard out to lunch; she has remained in touch with him, and is even writing letters of reference for him. “He is going to find it hard to get a job, because as soon as you Google his name that is what comes up,” she said. “And although he was a very silly, injudicious, and at that moment not very pleasant young guy, I don’t actually think one tweet should ruin your job prospects.”

In the context of recent events at the University of Illinois, in which Professor Steven Salaita was “de-hired” because of things he tweeted this summer, commenting on Israel’s bombing of Gaza, you might think that what I am drawn to here is Mary Beard’s charitable attitude toward tweets. But that is not it. That is just icing on the cake.

Instead, I find myself thinking about what life would be like if Mary Beard was chancellor of the University of Illinois. What I am enjoying right now is the idea of Mary Beard, or anyone with HALF her character, in university administration receiving an email from, say, a donor expressing concern about the likely unfairness of a faculty member with strong views about a political matter.

WHAT WOULD MARY BEARD DO?

I do not think she would defer to said donor, nor meet with university fundraisers, nor telephone the Board of Trustees. Instead, if the New Yorker article is any indication, I imagine she would listen and then invite the protesting or concerned donor or alum to come in for a lunch or a coffee with the faculty member whose views are so disturbing to him.

I imagine she would arrange the lunch, have it paid for, and perhaps have a word with the faculty member in advance, specially requesting s/he be patient and respond to concerns expressed with care (as s/he likely would do anyway). (We know, for example, that Steven Salaita sometimes responded to tweets of disagreement with offers to meet in person to discuss).

I imagine she might tell the donor—after lunch, with a nice wine, provided courtesy of the University of Illinois’ fundraising arm—that this lunch is a model of what universities are supposed to do: bring people together from diverse backgrounds and put them in challenging positions where their assumptions are in question and they can talk and learn from each other or respectfully disagree.

If she were American, she might then suggest that the donor could, with a nice donation, make such lunches a regular feature of student life at UIUC. They could be called something like, I don’t know… Salaita Salons, perhaps, and they could be featured monthly at the university.

WHAT WOULD MARY BEARD DO? It would not be a bad idea to have THAT emblazoned on some chancellors’ desks…

(with apologies in advance to Professor Beard, whom I have not met, if this post is too familiar, and with thanks for the inspiring example)

44 Comments

  1. Heike Schotten August 26, 2014 at 8:27 pm | #

    Hi Corey,

    re: Honig’s recent letter and on the issue of if university administrators might act differently, just wanted to make sure you knew about this:

    http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=708696

    Thanks and best, Heike

    Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: “Don’t criticize, since you’re not capable of carrying out a reform.” That’s ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, “this, then, is what needs to be done.” It should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn’t have to lay down the law for the law. It isn’t a stage in programming. It is a challenge directed to what is.

    Michel Foucault (1978)

  2. mike donnel August 26, 2014 at 10:05 pm | #

    How is that academics can’t accept that other adults might have well considered beliefs? The approach outlined above might work with a 20 year old student, but with a professionally accomplished donor, who has put considerable time and intellectual effort into her profession–what lesson would she need on the purposes of the university to which she donates? Professors, you might not agree with those who are offended by Salaita, and you might not agree that this expressions manifest anti-semitic animus (though I personally do believe they do), but at least have the courtesy to respect the faculties of those who do.

    • Bonnie Honig August 26, 2014 at 11:26 pm | #

      There is no disrespect in promoting another model for dealing with such issues and arguing that it is better. it is just an argument. Perhaps some of those who read it might change their minds, especially once confronted with such an exemplary practice for dealing with conflict, as that modeled by Professor Beard.

      • an observer, not an academic August 27, 2014 at 4:53 pm | #

        If only all academics argued and presented information like Mary Beard… we wouldn’t be talking about Salaita’s abrupt termination from U of I.

    • adam3smith August 27, 2014 at 12:03 am | #

      I would indeed suggest that donors who threaten to withdraw funding if a university defends the academic freedom of its faculty may benefit from some lessons into the purpose and nature of a successful university.
      And why _should_ a donor understand this as well as, say, a faculty member does? The donor has likely spend four, at most seven years at a university, likely many years ago. A senior faculty member has often spend decades at such places in all types of different positions.

      I listen carefully and with interest when accomplished professionals tell me about their line of work and business. Why should they not, in turn, also want to learn from accomplished academics (and someone receiving an offer for a tenured job at UIUC is certainly accomplished)? And the goal, of course, isn’t to convert anyone. No matter how great a professor and teacher Salaita is, he’s unlikely to convert a Zionist into a BDS supported over lunch, no matter how many bottles of wine. The goal is to show that we can exchange ideas–even passionately–with people who we fundamentally disagree with and benefit in the process. And as Bonnie says, what could be more in the spirit of a university?

  3. Marcus Daniel August 26, 2014 at 11:44 pm | #

    Dear Mike, any “professionally accomplished donor” who threatened to pull funding in response to views they don’t like at a university isn’t acting as a responsible member of their own profession – where standards of expertise and accomplishment may well be important to them – but as a crude blackmailer using their own financial leverage to enforce conformity, and cash to impose their own point of view. This is the problem with making universities so dependent on donors who see the institutions as personal property rather than as public places of learning and debate.

  4. bor August 27, 2014 at 3:50 am | #

    Prof. Honig, have you considered another scenario wherein Mary Beard is the chancellor and reads Salaita’s incredible description of Israelis from pg. 110 of his book “Israel’s Dead Soul”:

    “It is well known by Palestinians that anytime one of them enters or exits Israel, regardless of nationality, he or she will likely undergo an anal or vaginal probe. These probes… aren’t intended to be pragmatic. They are acts of psychological domineering and political assertion. The agents of these coercive actions are rehearsing their own depravity through fulfillment of their Orientalist notions of Arab and Muslim sexuality.”

    She googles Salaita and reads that he believes and openly tweets that anybody who supports Israel is a vile human being and that since Israel is conflated with Jews anti-Semitic sentiments that affect Jews shouldn’t surprise them.

    She then invites Salaita to lunch. She brings along a couple of Jewish students who support Israel and maybe even an Israeli who studies at the university. And then she will let Salaita tell them to their faces that any time a Palestinians enters or exits Israel he or she goes a vaginal or anal probe because of Israelis’ depravity and sexual longing for the forbidden Arab. They will surely smile and enjoy their lunch together and proceed back to their student lives and Salaita to his tenured position which he earned with such profound scholarship. And presumably the Jews nee Zionists will dream of doing an anal cavity search on Salaita since he is Palestinian and they are depraved.

    Please note that in my last remark I am paraphrasing Salaita, for whom you have expressed sympathy and support, not expressing my views.

    Please also note that while one may defend his right to publish such ridiculous ideas, and may even defend his right to teach them (although I don’t see how teaching this is different than teaching that Jews murder Christian children to make matzos with their blood or even teaching creationism for that matter), one surely would recognize that this sort of writing is not the same as someone being mean to you on the Internet because of your looks.

    This is bigotry dressed in political robes. This is bigotry that would rightly make any Jewish student in her right mind wary of attending Salaita’s class, any Jewish student in his right mind suspicious of any grade he gives them on any paper or exam, any student of any faith or background question whether this scholar is so lost in his passionate hatred of Israel that he embarrasses himself, his colleagues, his department and, yes, his university.

    There are some things that a kind word and a nice lunch won’t fix. This is a man who staunchly believes in the power of boycotts and that includes boycotting Israeli universities and academics. And a man who believes in shutting up others’ rights to speech truly has no grounds to complain when he is given a taste of his own medicine. His defenders do little to credit themselves when they ignore what he is saying and the mendacity of his ideas on the basis that a university must allow him to express them. As Wise wrote, students deserve protection and the right to study in peace without fear of labeling or other consequences merely for being on a faculty member’s black list.

    • David44 August 27, 2014 at 12:13 pm | #

      You write:

      “Prof. Honig, have you considered another scenario wherein Mary Beard is the chancellor and reads Salaita’s incredible description of Israelis from pg. 110 of his book “Israel’s Dead Soul”:

      “It is well known by Palestinians that anytime one of them enters or exits Israel, regardless of nationality, he or she will likely undergo an anal or vaginal probe. These probes… aren’t intended to be pragmatic. They are acts of psychological domineering and political assertion. The agents of these coercive actions are rehearsing their own depravity through fulfillment of their Orientalist notions of Arab and Muslim sexuality.”

      But this is NOT a description of Israelis (let alone Jews) in general (contrary to your sarcasm later on about “Jews nee Zionists [sic]” dreaming of performing an anal probe on Salaita). It is a description ONLY of those Israeli OFFICIALS who conduct anal and vaginal probes at airports. In the passage you ellipsed (you have read the book yourself, haven’t you?), you will note that Salaita says that the officials in question are of exactly the same mentality as guards in American prisons and “police stations round the world” who conduct similar invasive searches.

      In other words, far from suggesting that this is a quality of Israelis specifically, Salaita suggests that it is a quality of a certain brand of people in official power, and one shared by officials of all nationalities, including Americans.

      So, my questions for you are as follows:

      (a) HAVE you read Salaita’s book yourself?

      (b) If so, why, when quoting him, did you remove the phrase that showed that he is making a comment about coercive officials of all nationalities, and not generalizing about Israelis?

      OR (c), if you have not read the book yourself, how do you have the presumption to make confident arguments about what a Jewish student would think when reading it?

      • nattyb August 27, 2014 at 12:39 pm | #

        Thank you for your comment. I was responding in good-faith to Bor’s citation as I hadn’t read the actual quote without the elipses.

        Man, it just angers me to no end how this professor is being railroaded, and your comment perfectly illustrates how his detractors purposefully take his comments out of context to smear him (and then have the gall to “replace what he wrote with “women” or “Africans” to illustrate how this professor is some unhinged racist). So unprincipled.

      • bor August 27, 2014 at 3:19 pm | #

        So you’re arguing that Salaita is actually saying not that all Israelis are depraved in this way but only officials who work at border crossings are depraved in this way? Do you suppose that on the job questionnaire the Israeli border crossing authority has questions to elicit admission of this strange form of bigotry and hires on that basis? How do you suppose they word this question? Do you think perhaps they come right out and ask, “Do you have Orientalist notions of Arab and Muslim sexuality” or a more straightforward “Do you have an illicit but unquenchable desire to engage in a very particular type of sexual conduct with Arabs and Muslims?”

        Anyway, that’s not what he says. He is trying to make an argument about how non-Arabs and non-Muslims have ascribed certain sexual characteristics to their views of Arab and Muslim sexuality. Into this point, he suddenly, unnecessarily, inserts the point about Palestinians and Israelis. Then he compares the PROBES, not the salacious intentions, to probes in police stations around the world and the American prison system, and then returns to his point about the Israelis’ depravity. How do we know that he is specifically speaking about the Israelis? Because if Chinese police stations check the vaginas of 90% of Chinese people, as he claims, then his point about Orientalist notions of Arab and Muslim sexuality becomes pointless. After all, those Chinese are neither Muslim nor Arab. Or, if you take the American prison system, since the majority of prisoners aren’t Muslim his point about Orientalist notions becomes moot.

        That’s why the quote I’ve provided makes perfect sense as I’ve described it. You have to choose whether he’s a poor writer, which he clearly isn’t, or he’s trying to be sneaky by getting a bigoted point about Jewish Israelis across while pretending that it actually isn’t.

        I would go a step further and point out that in this instance, Salaita may be accused of antisemitism. He is claiming that Palestinians are checked regularly, to a degree where they assume that ANY TIME they cross they may be checked. That means that ALL Israeli officials are capable of checking at any possible chance. Therefore, when he writes that the Israeli officials “are rehearsing their own depravity through fulfillment of their Orientalist notions of Arab and Muslim sexuality” he is certainly claiming that any Israeli with that job engages in this behavior for these depraved reasons and therefore ANY Israel would and that’s because EVERY Israeli, according to Salaita’s “scholarship,” is depraved in this way. Of course, since he cannot be referring to Arab-Israelis who work at Israel’s borders and crossings since they cannot possibly possess “Orientalist notions of Arab and Muslim sexuality,” he is specifically referring to Jewish Israelis.

        As for your other questions.
        A. I have read sections of the book. I really couldn’t bring myself to read all of it, it is that bad. I find it to be a ridiculous book filled with such bias and shoddy attempts to sneak ugly garbage commentary into supposedly serious claims that the fact a university press published it speaks ill of those publishers and editors. I also think that the fact UI offered him a job speaks ill of that department and well of the leadership which decided the offer should be rescinded.

        B. I removed the part of the quote that was immaterial, as I demonstrate above. Perhaps you should attempt to read more critically?

        C. I’m not a Jewish student, but I can IMAGINE being one. So can you. Why don’t you take your religious/ethnic/racial/gender identity and insert it into his paragraph as I did in my example with Africans. Then pretend you are a student at a university where Salaita teaches. See? It’s easy to imagine what the outcome would be. In fact, I’d argue that my claim about how Jewish students might react is far more accurate and believable than Salaita’s university-press-published claim about Israeli border crossing guards’ supposed depravity.

      • David44 August 27, 2014 at 4:48 pm | #

        Bor said:

        “So you’re arguing that Salaita is actually saying not that all Israelis are depraved in this way but only officials who work at border crossings are depraved in this way? Do you suppose that on the job questionnaire the Israeli border crossing authority has questions to elicit admission of this strange form of bigotry and hires on that basis?”

        No, I take him to be saying something more complex than that. He is saying that these sexualized views of Arabs are widespread, not only in Israel, but in all Western cultures (he makes that point constantly and repeatedly in the course of the chapter). They are, however, only manifested in this form of invasive sexual search by people who hold a certain sort of power and who are licensed to express that power in the way in which people across the world express their power in comparable situations. In other words, it is a combination of the power-structure of the situation with the existing stereotype of Arabs that creates the abuses he describes.

        This is an indictment of Israel, certainly, but it is not the sort of crude indictment you implied, and it is no less an indictment of all other Western countries. After all, in his very next words after the passage you quoted, he illustrates his case NOT with the example of Israel, but with the behavior of American soldiers towards Arabs at Abu Ghraib. If you think that his description of Israeli officials at border crossings should make Israelis or Jews uncomfortable in his classes, it would presumably follow that his description IN EXACTLY THE SAME TERMS of Americans at Abu Ghraib should make Americans uncomfortable in his classes …

        “Of course, since he cannot be referring to Arab-Israelis who work at Israel’s borders and crossings since they cannot possibly possess “Orientalist notions of Arab and Muslim sexuality,” he is specifically referring to Jewish Israelis.”

        That seems remarkably naive. Arabs certainly can possess hostile stereotypes about Arab sexuality, simply through participating in the culture in which those stereotypes are widespread, in exactly the same way as many 19th-century Jews subscribed to the contemporary anti-Semitic portraits of Jewish greed and power and so on. Salaita is talking about the culture that generates the abuse, not about the ethnicity of the perpetrators.

        “C. I’m not a Jewish student, but I can IMAGINE being one. So can you. Why don’t you take your religious/ethnic/racial/gender identity and insert it into his paragraph as I did in my example with Africans. Then pretend you are a student at a university where Salaita teaches. See? It’s easy to imagine what the outcome would be. In fact, I’d argue that my claim about how Jewish students might react is far more accurate and believable than Salaita’s university-press-published claim about Israeli border crossing guards’ supposed depravity.”

        I don’t need to make any insertions into his paragraph! I AM Jewish (and religiously observant – this isn’t just my ethnicity), and I was a Jewish student not that long ago; I am not Israeli, but have many close relatives in Israel. So I can reply from my own experience: I would not feel at all uncomfortable in Prof. Salaita’s classes. I would (and do) disagree with much of what he says; I do not share his political and intellectual standpoint (even leaving Israel aside, I am much more politically conservative than he is), but neither of them are negligible, and I believe that I benefit more from engaging with and learning from people I disagree with than from trying to wall myself off from them.

      • bor August 27, 2014 at 11:01 pm | #

        I don’t know this commenting system so I’m not sure whether this will appear above or below your response but this is a response to David44’s comment that begins with “Bor said:”

        “No, I take him to be saying something more complex than that. He is saying that these sexualized views of Arabs are widespread, not only in Israel, but in all Western cultures (he makes that point constantly and repeatedly in the course of the chapter).”

        The chapter is called “Sexuality, Violence and Modernity in Israel,” not in “Israel and the West.” The reason he cites the West, and contrary to what you claim, briefly at that, is essentially to provide cover and camouflage for the negative points he wants to make about Israel and Israelis. And he gets a twofer in there. Not only does this provide camouflage, but it allows him to label Israel a colonizer just like those good ol’ Europeans were. Except, of course, that for Europe those were the good old days and Israel is presently a colonizer in this presentation.

        “They are, however, only manifested in this form of invasive sexual search by people who hold a certain sort of power and who are licensed to express that power in the way in which people across the world express their power in comparable situations. In other words, it is a combination of the power-structure of the situation with the existing stereotype of Arabs that creates the abuses he describes.”

        But he talks about others in the abstract and without examples. Abu Gharaib is the exception that proves the rule He can point to one American circumstance. Don’t the Swedes project their Orientalist depravity? The British? Where are his examples? He had none. He actually had few even with respect to Israel and instead tried to play straw man games with Standwithus and the David Project (seriously?).

        With Israel he specifies this supposed presently ongoing anal and vaginal cavity search and specifies the searchers’ depravity which, again, cannot be placed at other nations’ police forces’ or prison guards’ feet since their Muslim populations are smaller and their experience with Arab terrorism nowhere near as extensive as Israel’s. The only group which can be listed in this respect – that of projecting their supposed depravity on an ongoing basis are the Israelis. Other Westerners are lucky to project theirs once in a blue moon, such as when an abu Gharaib comes up (once) but Israelis do it ANY TIME.

        When the Americans sitting in Salaita’s classroom hear about Abu Gharaib, they will justifiably be upset with their fellow Americans, but they will treat this prison as a one-off situation. The terms are NOT the same as what he states about Israel. For the Americans in the class, it happened once. It was nasty. It’s over. The Americans get to feel badly about it, but not too bad since it’s an aberration. Salaita’s Jewish student, however, will have to live with his professor’s declaration that Jews project this ugliness all the time in Israel. Those around the Jewish student will wonder whether s/he is depraved in the same way as those Jews in Israel. This is insidious stuff, David, don’t brush it off so lightly.

        By the way, permit me to note that I think his claims about this are ridiculous, or at best apply to tiny segments of society, but I understand (and am used to seeing) Palestinian and anti-Israel scholars using every opportunity and every platform to besmirch Israel, so none of this is surprising. Let me give you an example. Border guards, police forces and prison guards around the world do indeed conduct cavity checks on prisoners and arrested individuals sometimes (not ANY time). Sometimes minorities are the dominant group being searched. Does that mean that American jailers in California have depraved notions of Mexican sexuality? Do Russians have depraved notions of Chechens? You are defending an absurd proposition.

        “Arabs certainly can possess hostile stereotypes about Arab sexuality, simply through participating in the culture in which those stereotypes are widespread, in exactly the same way as many 19th-century Jews subscribed to the contemporary anti-Semitic portraits of Jewish greed and power and so on.”

        First of all, one of the fundamental truths about Israel and its tolerance for its minorities, as well as the freedoms they enjoy, particularly in the religious sphere, negates your point. Without delving too deeply into this, while there are certainly many influences going in all directions within Israeli society, the fact remains that virtually all of its communities maintain their cultural and religious distinctions and traditions and the law backs this situation. Second, I am amused that in a discussion about a book about Israel’s dead soul that lists countless circumstances of supposed inequality and maltreatment of Arabs by Israel, instead of discussing noxious and false apartheid claims, I am suddenly confronted with an argument about significant cultural integration of Arabs into Israeli society to a degree that they absorb depraved Orientalist ideas about their fellow Arabs’ and Muslims’ sexuality. This is funny.

        “Salaita is talking about the culture that generates the abuse, not about the ethnicity of the perpetrators.”

        Again, this is extremely and highly unlikely. But, in attempting to be fair, I did use the word “may” when I accused him of antisemitism in this instance. That was for your benefit. As far as I’m concerned, there is no question about it. By the way, his chapter is filled with errors. For example, he claims that all Israelis of all religions must swear an oath of loyalty to the state. A simple google search would have disabused him of that published error.

        “I don’t need to make any insertions into his paragraph! I AM Jewish (and religiously observant – this isn’t just my ethnicity), and I was a Jewish student not that long ago; I am not Israeli, but have many close relatives in Israel. So I can reply from my own experience: I would not feel at all uncomfortable in Prof. Salaita’s classes.”

        Wonderful, you should go back to school. I’m sure Lisa Duggan will help Salaita land a new gig soon. However, your comments have demonstrated naivete or at least an extremely generous and forgiving reading of what Salaita is writing and doing in this chapter. Other (I would venture most) Jewish students might view Salaita’s writings precisely as he intended them to be read, as will the non-Jewish students in the class.

        As for engaging a professor in class, most students care about their grade and care about their peers’ opinion of them and will not challenge him openly. Some might try once or twice, but chances are they won’t yet have the tools and knowledge to confront a Salaita with his decades of involvement in researching and advocating against Israel and its (Jewish) inhabitants. How would they know that when he proclaims that every Israeli is required to swear a loyalty oath, that he’s mistaken or lying? One can study this conflict for years and years and still only know a fraction of what there is to know. The likelihood of a young student being able to challenge Salaita and his advocacy head on effectively is relatively small…if Salaita would allow it. After all, he might be concerned that the depraved Jewish potential border guard before him wants to probe his anus. So he may entertain the student’s challenges or he may instead cut the student off or mock her. I’ve seen both done by professors of a similar political bent to Salaita’s. I’ve even had it done to me…precisely when I asked the questions they couldn’t answer without undermining their entire presentation…

      • David44 August 28, 2014 at 11:32 am | #

        The replies seem to be getting longer and longer: let me try to abridge your argument (I hope fairly!) in order to make my response comprehensible.

        Bor wrote:

        “The chapter is called “Sexuality, Violence and Modernity in Israel,” not in “Israel and the West.” The reason he cites the West, and contrary to what you claim, briefly at that, is essentially to provide cover and camouflage for the negative points he wants to make about Israel and Israelis … he talks about others in the abstract and without examples. Abu Gharaib is the exception that proves the rule He can point to one American circumstance. Don’t the Swedes project their Orientalist depravity? The British? Where are his examples? He had none.”

        OF COURSE the chapter is called “in Israel” – the book is about Israel! And for the same reason, only one direct parallel is cited for other countries. But it requires a perverse reading – not to say a measure of circular argumentation – to assume that this is merely to “provide cover” or “the exception that proves the rule”. The fact that he DOES talk about other countries, and DOES provide the example of Abu Ghraib, shows that he regards this as a particular manifestation of a Western phenomenon, and not something specific to Israelis – let alone to “Jews”, something he never once suggests. It appears that the passage you quoted at the start as uncomplicated proof of Salaita’s anti-Semitic tendencies actually can only be read as such if you _assume_ that anti-Semitism is there and that the explicit indications to the contrary are mere “cover”!

        “When the Americans sitting in Salaita’s classroom hear about Abu Gharaib, they will justifiably be upset with their fellow Americans, but they will treat this prison as a one-off situation … The Americans get to feel badly about it, but not too bad since it’s an aberration.”

        We can be sure that Salaita does not expect people to respond in this way. Salaita discussed Abu Ghraib extensively in his book “Anti-Arab Racism in the USA” (London, 2006: see esp. chapter 6), and he treated it exactly as he does with the Israelis here, NOT as a “one-off” or an “aberration”, but as a pathological expression of an attitude towards Arabs that is constant within American culture. (And it is pretty certainly not true that Abu Ghraib was a one-off, anyway: see e.g. http://www.levin.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/supporting/2008/Detainees.121108.pdf .) Have a look at that book, and _then_ tell me whether you think Americans should be uncomfortable in Salaita’s classes.

        “First of all, one of the fundamental truths about Israel and its tolerance for its minorities, as well as the freedoms they enjoy, particularly in the religious sphere, negates your point. Without delving too deeply into this, while there are certainly many influences going in all directions within Israeli society, the fact remains that virtually all of its communities maintain their cultural and religious distinctions and traditions and the law backs this situation. Second, I am amused that in a discussion about a book about Israel’s dead soul that lists countless circumstances of supposed inequality and maltreatment of Arabs by Israel, instead of discussing noxious and false apartheid claims, I am suddenly confronted with an argument about significant cultural integration of Arabs into Israeli society to a degree that they absorb depraved Orientalist ideas about their fellow Arabs’ and Muslims’ sexuality. This is funny.”

        I was talking about the acceptance of the dominant stereotypes of a minority by that minority themselves. That is something that can and does happen even in a free and tolerant society which respects the rights of minorities to practice their religions, so the (real) virtues of Israel are (in this respect) entirely irrelevant. By coincidence, there was an article by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times this morning which (in passing) made this very point about African-Americans in the US accepting hostile stereotypes about their own community (see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/opinion/nicholas-kristof-is-everyone-a-little-bit-racist.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0 ). You would not, I presume, suggest that Israel is a _more_ free and tolerant society towards its Arab citizens than the US is towards its black citizens?

        “Wonderful, you should go back to school. I’m sure Lisa Duggan will help Salaita land a new gig soon. However, your comments have demonstrated naivete or at least an extremely generous and forgiving reading of what Salaita is writing and doing in this chapter. Other (I would venture most) Jewish students might view Salaita’s writings precisely as he intended them to be read, as will the non-Jewish students in the class.”

        Since I am Jewish, and (on your own account) you are not, I venture to suggest that I am more likely to be an accurate judge of how Jewish students will respond than you are. I would also note that “as he intended them to be read” is question-begging: you have not yet come even close to demonstrating that Salaita “intended” anything of the sort.

        “As for engaging a professor in class, most students care about their grade and care about their peers’ opinion of them and will not challenge him openly …The likelihood of a young student being able to challenge Salaita and his advocacy head on effectively is relatively small…if Salaita would allow it. After all, he might be concerned that the depraved Jewish potential border guard before him wants to probe his anus. So he may entertain the student’s challenges or he may instead cut the student off or mock her. I’ve seen both done by professors of a similar political bent to Salaita’s. I’ve even had it done to me”.

        There are indeed professors who do these things, and whose students are intimidated from challenging them. However, all of the ACTUAL evidence of Salaita’s ACTUAL teaching is that he is not that sort of professor at all: he is someone who does not push his own views in the classroom, who is respectful of all opinions, and actively encourages his students to challenge him. (See, for example, the testimonials at http://supportstevensalaita.com/steves-students-speak/ , including at least one from a Jewish student.) These accounts of Salaita’s ACTUAL teaching are far more telling and far more important than your (or indeed my) speculations about who would or wouldn’t be happy in his classroom.

      • bor August 28, 2014 at 1:44 pm | #

        David,

        “OF COURSE the chapter is called “in Israel” – the book is about Israel! And for the same reason, only one direct parallel is cited for other countries.”

        But that negates your earlier claim that he mentions other places throughout the chapter where the same is done. My point is that he didn’t and you now appear to agree with me and to reject your earlier claim. The claim that he is only providing the one direct parallel because that’s all he needs to provide can only be proven if there are other examples such as Abu Gharaib. There aren’t. Go ahead, you have the entire West from which to select some examples that demonstrate his point.

        “But it requires a perverse reading – not to say a measure of circular argumentation – to assume that this is merely to “provide cover” or “the exception that proves the rule”. The fact that he DOES talk about other countries, and DOES provide the example of Abu Ghraib, shows that he regards this as a particular manifestation of a Western phenomenon, and not something specific to Israelis – let alone to “Jews”, something he never once suggests.”

        Perverse? Perhaps the word you’re seeking is “critical?” He doesn’t talk about other countries except in the most general terms and the only example he provides is Abu Gharaib. You translate that to mean that he has done enough, I translate it to mean that he is trying to make a case that doesn’t hold water and he seeks to cover up his real agenda – that of writing something negative about Israeli Jews – by making claims that don’t survive close scrutiny. And it’s not as if he hides his political stripes, his entire book is one big diatribe against Israel. But for some reason, you are willing to pretend that this is proper scholarship.

        If so, then let’s disabuse you of that notion right now. If you scroll down to my comment below in response to Neil’s question, Salaita’s contentions about Israel in the section I originally quoted do not come with any citations. On the other hand, I was able to quote the Israeli airport authority’s chief legal counsel speaking to a Knesset committee saying only 5% of minorities are stopped and then I provide interviews with two former Israeli airport security leaders who state that questioning and behavior examination are THE key tools in their toolbox. In other words, the claim that “It is well known by Palestinians that anytime one of them enters or exits Israel, regardless of nationality, he or she will likely undergo an anal or vaginal probe” contains a number of falsehoods. And, if these claims are false, so are the rest of the claims about this being domineering behavior projecting the Israelis’ depravity.

        In other words, in the simplest terms, Salaita is provably wrong and almost certainly intentionally misleading on this subject since the airport security information I found was available under searches for “Israel airport security” and the like.

        My “perverse” reading and “circular” argument are actually based on cited facts. His claims are not. Furthermore, if you would just take a step back and use simple common sense, you would see that none of this passes the smell test. How hard would it be to say “as we saw in Abu Gharaib, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gulf War and the Dutch prison system.” It’s not. It’s a few words. He spends pages talking fluffy BS about Sacha Baron Cohen’s idiotic movie but can’t mention more than two examples of the Westerners being all depraved about Arabs and Muslims? And one of those examples, the Israeli one, of course, being concocted out of whole cloth?

        This isn’t complicated, David. Why are you giving him a pass on this?

        “It appears that the passage you quoted at the start as uncomplicated proof of Salaita’s anti-Semitic tendencies actually can only be read as such if you _assume_ that anti-Semitism is there and that the explicit indications to the contrary are mere “cover”!”

        As I point out above, common sense prevails here. He accuses the Israelis of anally and vaginally probing most Palestinians who travel in order to express their domineering ways and as a projection of their perverse sexual views regarding Arabs and Muslims. He provides one single other example (Abu Gharaib) but no others. He mentions prison guards and police around the world who do the same, but this demonstrably false as I point out with my China and California police/Mexican prisoner example. Theirs cannot be perversely motivated as well since the Mexican and Chinese prisoners are not of the Orient. Oh, and just to buttress my point, and so that you don’t claim that it’s a writer’s prerogative, he spends 3 or 4 pages on Sacha Baron Cohen’s movie and another 3 or 4 attacking Stand With Us and the David Project.

        “We can be sure that Salaita does not expect people to respond in this way. Salaita discussed Abu Ghraib extensively in his book “Anti-Arab Racism in the USA” (London, 2006: see esp. chapter 6)”

        With all due respect, I am done reading Salaita. He’s a very unimpressive scholar. The couple of reviews (by sympathetic reviewers) I’ve read indicate that book is simply more of the junk found in this book. Would Americans feel comfortable in his class? Who knows? Considering he continually brings up Israel and Jewish scholars (he targets Daniel Pipes in that book), perhaps they will feel something about Jews.

        “I was talking about the acceptance of the dominant stereotypes of a minority by that minority themselves.”

        You were talking about a claim made by Salaita which we now know is demonstrably false and undermines his other claim about perverse Orientalism, etc. It was hogwash before we had evidence that it was hogwash but now that we can demonstrate that it’s hogwash, perhaps it’s time to let go of the idea that Arab Israelis view themselves through a prism which doesn’t exist?

        “You would not, I presume, suggest that Israel is a _more_ free and tolerant society towards its Arab citizens than the US is towards its black citizens?”

        The comparison is silly.

        “Since I am Jewish, and (on your own account) you are not, I venture to suggest that I am more likely to be an accurate judge of how Jewish students will respond than you are.”

        I didn’t say whether I’m Jewish or not. It’s irrelevant.

        “I would also note that “as he intended them to be read” is question-begging: you have not yet come even close to demonstrating that Salaita “intended” anything of the sort.”

        Well, now that we can demonstrate that his assertions are way off, I hope you’ll reconsider that claim.

        “However, all of the ACTUAL evidence of Salaita’s ACTUAL teaching…”

        I’m glad he has a website up and 6 students out of the hundreds and hundreds he has taught liked him. I can think of a couple of universities around here that have well-liked activist Palestinian-American professors whose teaching reviews are excellent. I’ve attended their classes and I’ve attended lectures and programs they’ve given outside of classes. I wish I could say that I felt as if they weren’t targeting supporters of Israel. But they were. And their lectures contained and contain all sorts of misstatements and outright falsehoods about Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict that obviously stemmed not from solid scholarship but from a deep anti-Israel bias that colored and tainted their scholarship. Students learned far less than they could and should have, and what they did learn contained multiple inaccuracies and mistakes. And, as I noted above, you could only ask a relatively small number of questions, and once they were seriously challenged, they would shut down the questions or that line of questioning. It’s possible that Salaita is different, but his tweets and this chapter that we’re discussing and in particular the passage I noted, suggest that he’s exactly the same. He’s an anti-Israel political activist in the guise and position of a scholar.

        Anyway, I think we’ve hashed this out enough. Be well.

  5. Bonnie Honig August 27, 2014 at 8:07 am | #

    There is no evidence in the record that Professor Salaita ever did anything to cause students to fear “labeling or other consequences merely for being on a faculty member’s black list.” These are fears people now have since they think such behavior FOLLOWS from views he has expressed. There is no evidence to support it. and there is at least one letter from a former students praising his teaching and approach to students. Had there ever been such behavior, intimidation, etc., it would be right and fair to reprimand any faculty member for it. But de-hiring someone because some people who differ with him politically fear that he might do something which he has never done? enough said.

    • bor August 27, 2014 at 11:30 am | #

      My apologies. You are right. There is no evidence. On the other hand, please consider that the quote I provided (academic sphere) and the tweets I paraphrased (private sphere, though scholars trade on their reputations and degrees to gain respectability for their publicly expressed ideas) are real and may be considered evidence.

      Are these quotes not labeling and consequences on their own? The student in his class who reads the academic work will form a strong (and false, and bigoted, and negative) view of the Israeli student in his class, or if she conflates Jewish with Israeli (as most people do despite the claim that oft-used hedging claim that “Jewish isn’t Zionist”), of the Jewish student. or if she knows or assumes the person is a supporter of Israel, of the Israel-supporting student. Are you suggesting that the experience of that Israeli or Jewish or Israel-supporter in a Salaita class is the same as all other students? It isn’t. And that’s without getting into all the students who need to take Salaita’s elective classes – classes that may be of great interest or even necessity – who won’t because of what he has written and said about them.

      Here’s a rewrite of Salaita (please forgive me as I obviously reject this out of hand):

      “It is well known by white women that anytime one of them enters or exits an African country, that she will likely undergo an anal or vaginal probe. These probes… aren’t intended to be pragmatic. They are acts of psychological domineering and political assertion. The African males who conduct these coercive actions are rehearsing their own depravity through fulfillment of their culture’s inherent beliefs regarding African male sexual dominance.”

      or “All African men are terrible human beings.”

      If you’re a black man in that class, are you labeled?
      If you’re a black man in that class, will you even have confidence that you will be fairly graded?
      If you’re a black man in that school, would you even consider taking a Salaita class or avoid them?
      If you’re a black man on that campus and you know that Salaita teaches there and perhaps is even a popular professor, are you not going to be constantly aware of how others will or may perceive you?

      The answers seems fairly obvious to me. Am I missing something?

      • nattyb August 27, 2014 at 12:15 pm | #

        It’s telling that you’re seemingly more perturbed by (i) Saliata’s questionable reasoning re: why Palestinians (regardless of nationality! I can send you countless links to American-Palestinians who were subject to such treatment for no good reason, we’re talking Quaker teachers in the West Bank) are subject to anal/vaginal probes nearly every time they enter/exit Israel then by (ii) the fact that Palestinians are subject to anal/vaginal probes nearly every time they enter/exit Israel.

        You don’t need to “change the parties around” to try to make your point. You can stick to the words he used.

        He’s insulting the border guards who unnecessarily and excessively strip search Palestinians. He isn’t staining all Jews (which is a flaw in your African analogy). He’s saying the people probing 80 year old American-Palestinian women’s vaginas are depraved and they do this because they’re acting out Orientalist notions of Muslim/Arab sexuality. Well, I haven’t read Orientalism, but I sure as hell would like to sit in his class and engage as to why he believes that (or of course, I could read his book) as I don’t think he can read the minds of every border guard. But apparently such a discussion would be too dangerous or difficult for University of Illinois and certain of its thin-skinned students.

        Are you also saying that the allegation that such tactics are used for psychological, political and assertion is somehow bunk? Oh man. That’s the type of nuance that absolutely should be taught. Like, how the TSA acts as a form of security theater which in part is intended to create an increasingly submissive and pliant citizenry . . . which over times decreases our reasonable expectations of privacy which then nub the breadth of 4th Amendment protections and increase State power. . . . Definitely well within the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

    • Brian Kerk September 4, 2014 at 4:35 pm | #

      “There is no evidence in the record that Professor Salaita ever did anything to cause students to fear ‘labeling or other consequences merely for being on a faculty member’s black list.'”

      Of course there’s evidence. He out and out stated himself that if you disagree with him on a particular topic, you are an “awful human being” – he’s labeled half his students and co-workers right off the bat.

      Putting aside the context of the anal/vaginal search quote and what he meant, it’s also just untrue. It’s “likely” – as in, a greater than 50% chance – that any time you pass an Israeli checkpoint someone’s going to put their fingers up in your guts? Really? Literally every other person passing through the border (or more) is being cavity searched? There isn’t enough time in the day to do that. Salaita is guilty of shoddy research and/or just lying outright. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he just believes the worst things he hears are true without critically engaging the claims. Because Jooz, y’know?

      The truth is, Salaita is even more guilty of intolerance of debate / different views as those who didn’t hire him. He wishes death on Israeli citizens (sorry, he wishes “going missing” on them, wink wink) and dismisses those who differ from his narrow opinions as awful human beings.

      The only mistake UI made was hiring him in the first place.

      • J Thomas September 4, 2014 at 6:21 pm | #

        “He out and out stated himself that if you disagree with him on a particular topic, you are an “awful human being” – he’s labeled half his students and co-workers right off the bat.”

        You ought to cut him some slack, he was probably upset when thousands of his people were being slaughtered indiscriminately.

        He hasn’t been intemperate in the classroom, which is what counts.

        If you have a job, and people looked online for the most intemperate thing you’ve ever said to try to get you fired, imagine what they might find.

  6. Louise Bernikow August 27, 2014 at 10:56 am | #

    The first Mary Beard lived through the runup to World War I and repression of dissent about it, esp at Columbia University, where her husband Charles Beard, and many others, faced an administration hell bent on getting rid of “unpatriotic” faculty members.

  7. Roquentin August 27, 2014 at 1:29 pm | #

    On a side note, the hateful insults on twitter made me think of this article by someone who blogs only under the pseudonym “The Last Psychiatrist.” It’s close in the running for my favorite blog on the internet, at least in the top 5, and I once threw away more than half a day reading old entries. Politically, he seems to be vaguely in the center, but the analysis is both hilarious and poignant. So without further delay:

    http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html

  8. Neil Schipper August 27, 2014 at 8:25 pm | #

    In the discussion above, this sentence is claimed to exist in Salaita’s book:

    It is well known by Palestinians that anytime one of them enters or exits Israel, regardless of nationality, he or she will likely undergo an anal or vaginal probe.

    No one has challenged the existence of this sentence, so I’ll regard that existence as “true” — that is, socially constructed by y’all.

    Anti-Zionist groups work hard to publicize actions by Israeli state actors that contravene actual and purported norms of liberal democracies.

    A common interpretation of “he or she will likely undergo X” is: “he or she will undergo, more than 50% of the time, X”.

    For present purposes, particularly given the undesirable nature of undergoing a body cavity probe during a border crossing, let us socially construct agreement that the original statement is feasible if the occurrence rate is one twentieth of that, 2.5% .

    I did web searches using various combinations of terms like:

    vaginal anal probe border control israel palestinian

    and no relevant items came up. (With some combos, the present blog posting appeared; otherwise, items were mainly about the TSA, the Mexican border and medical implements.)

    Can anyone here speak to this anomaly? Does Salaita’s book provide a citation?

    • Neil Schipper August 27, 2014 at 10:34 pm | #

      Further to my prior post, I specifically searched for “anal probe” and “vaginal probe” at Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada and 972 mag. Nothing came up.

      Adam, you may have a great book in you. But you did change the subject.

      • adam3smith August 27, 2014 at 11:43 pm | #

        I have no expertise on the topic itself, but I am good at google-fu and you’re using bad search terms. Salaita is purposefully using non-technical terms to highlight the invasiveness of the search. The technical term is cavity search and you find a fair number of reports of those when searching for it with Israel or Palestine.
        Obviously that tells us nothing about their frequency, just that there are, in fact, people talking about them occuring.

      • bor August 28, 2014 at 2:46 am | #

        That was very helpful, Adam3Smith. Thanks. With this new search parameter I found a fairly recent article that provides some stats to answer Neil’s question:

        http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/society/140304-israel-airport-authority-to-be-educated-on-humiliating-security-procedures

        “Haaretz reported that the airport authority’s legal adviser Aryeh Shaham…made a point of saying that the airport does not engage in any type of racial profiling.

        “The procedures aren’t different for this or that person, and the check isn’t based on population group,” Shaham said. He also criticized Israel’s Supreme Court of creating difficulties for the airports authority with their “strict supervision.”

        Shaham also noted that “from a statistical point of view, barely 5 percent of minorities are checked.”

        5 percent!

        And, it seems that instead of anal and vaginal probes, Israelis mostly like to ask questions:

        http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/airport-security-solution-tsa-profile-travelers-prevent-terrorist/story?id=9476997

        ” Rafi Ron, the former director of security at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport and now head of New Age Security Solutions, said that we can actually provide security with technology at checkpoints and baggage checks “doesn’t seem to be working.”

        …The only practical solution, he said, is to profile somebody based on their behavior.

        Ron also emphasized that profiling should not be based on race or ethnicity.

        For instance, he said that your gut instinct would be that a Palestinian or another Arab would attack Tel Aviv’s airport.

        However, in 1972 it was members of the Japanese Red Army who used machine guns to kill 24 people in the passenger arrival area.”

        That article has another Israeli aviation security expert saying pretty much the same thing. Very interesting read. In both cases, these former Israeli airport security leader speak about asking questions, not probing anally.

        Also, in that Knesset meeting with Aryeh Shaham, the Airport Authority’s legal counsel, that Knesset meeting ended with him agreeing to have Arab Israeli MKs come to the airport “to lecture on racial sensitivity in airport security training courses.” The same article later continues to describe his testimony:

        “Shaham said that most people who undergo extensive security checks are embarrassed, and that it has nothing to do with race….The High Court does not make our life easy, and we are constantly being watched.”

        In other words, at Israeli airport you are likely to get a serious and cautious search that involves questioning most of the time, with oversight from Israel’s independent High Court (its supreme court).

        So now we know that Salaita is wrong in claiming:
        1. that anytime a Palestinian enters or exits Israel, regardless of nationality, he or she will likely undergo a search.
        2. that said Palestinian will have to endure an anal or vaginal probe. Instead, he or she is likely to be questioned.
        3. That these probes (which aren’t even spoken about)… are not intended to be pragmatic.
        4. That the searches are acts of psychological domineering and political assertion. Instead they appear to be explorations to sense or determine elements in the behavior of the profiled individual.
        5. That Israeli airport security agents are “rehearsing their own depravity through fulfillment of their Orientalist notions of Arab and Muslim sexuality.” Unless, of course, the 5% they’re selecting for questioning are the sexy ones. Instead, it seems they’re looking for anomalies.

        And while I was researching that stuff, I came across a bit of history to put Israel’s airport security concerns in perspective:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lod_Airport_massacre

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_and_Vienna_airport_attacks

        http://forward.com/articles/202339/suspected-bomber-idd-in-bulgaria-airport-attack-th/

        http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2012/06/19/what-israeli-airport-security-teaches-the-world/

        “Ben Gurion has of course experienced some lapses in security. In a November 2002 incident, a passenger slipped through airport security with a pocketknife and attempted to storm the cockpit of an El Al flight en route from Tel Aviv to Istanbul.

        While no injuries were reported and the attacker was subdued by onboard flight marshals, the airport was closed for some time. The attacker was an Israeli Arab who had managed to evade security personnel when checking in.”

        It’s been an interesting day. I’m sure Mary Beard would have gotten a kick out of it.

      • Neil Schipper August 28, 2014 at 3:27 am | #

        Weird that the (spirited but off-point) comment by Adam Albrett that appeared above my “August 27, 2014 at 10:34 pm” no longer appears.

      • Neil Schipper August 28, 2014 at 4:12 am | #

        adam3smith is correct; there are reports of cavity searches going back to 2008.

        All (or nearly all) of the recipients appear to be activists. There are around ten such incidents, reported exclusively on fiercely partisan sites such as Counterpunch.

        Thousands of Arabs fly in and out of Israel annually.

    • bor August 27, 2014 at 11:35 pm | #

      Salaita’s book does not provide a citation to the claim quoted. The only citations around this section of the chapter are to three books that discuss Orientalism and foreign views of Arab and Muslim sexuality (by Said, Massad, and Babayan and Najmadi). Those books to my knowledge don’t address supposed anal probes, although I’m sure Massad is kicking himself for missing an opportunity and Said is groaning in his grave for the same reason. Salaita has outdone his mentors, although they got to keep their jobs and became stars.

      The anomaly which you point out exists because Salaita is making things up. Permit me to demonstrate, since you mention Electronic Intifada. Here is one of their stories about supposed airport abuse by Israel: http://electronicintifada.net/content/ben-gurion-airport-welcome-israel/3895:

      “‘Could you please take off your shoes?’ the security officer (‘I am from airport security’) asks me politely. ‘You can go to this room’, he says, ‘it’s more private’. In the case I need to be humiliated I prefer to be humiliated in front of other passengers. ‘No thanks, I can do it here on the spot’, I replied.”

      How brutal. How depraved. But no anal probe.

      • Neil Schipper August 28, 2014 at 3:56 am | #

        David44 and nattyb, and, for that matter, Corey Robin and Bonnie Honig: do your perceive, like bor, that a citation is absent? For the conversation to advance, we should socially construct agreement on this point.

      • J Thomas August 31, 2014 at 6:17 am | #

        Bor, you seem like a thoroughly unpleasant person. And you try to make Salaita look bad. In this example you accuse him of making things up, because he says something that you say does not fit what Israeli government sources claim about their airports. But we cannot trust Israeli government sources — they are biased because they come from a nation at war, that must say what will help the war effort.

        But surely the large majority of Palestinians who go through Israeli checkpoints go through checkpoints between Palestinian areas, or occasionally between Palestinian areas and Israel. Not airports, of which Palestine has none. And at those checkpoints there are only Israeli guards and Palestinians. So your datum really does not count. Perhaps you could find Israeli checkpoint guards who will give an estimate how often they do cavity searches?

      • bor August 31, 2014 at 5:46 pm | #

        Sorry J,

        An airport lawyer speaking to a Knesset committee is very likely to be speaking the truth. As for the other Israeli officials, they were interviewed at different times, in different places and contexts long after they had left Israel to live and work in the US as airport security consultants, each with his own company. In other words, it’s multiple sources speaking at different times and they are seeking to advise others. Why would they lie about the same thing? One of them specifically notes that targeting only minorities would be foolish and gives the historical example of the 1972 Lod airport Massacre which was perpetrated by Japanese.

        As for whether you like me or not, who cares? The fact you can like Salaita after reading him but dislike me for pointing out his hateful, unimpressive writings speaks volumes about you.

      • J Thomas August 31, 2014 at 7:52 pm | #

        Ah, Bor.

        You think that reports by zionists are necessarily true, while reports by anti-zionists are biased and false.

        But there is no more reason to believe reports by zionists than reports by anti-zionists. Many zionists get caught lying quite a lot. They are intensely biased. Israeli government employees lie because they don’t want the Israeli government to look bad.

        And anyway most of the palestinians who go through Israeli checkpoints aren’t at airports, they are going from place to place in the West Bank. There is no question that there, palestinians are treated very different from Israelis. It is assumed that palestinians want to cause trouble and Israelis do not. Except when there is reason to think the Israelis want to cause trouble, and some of those report being cavity-searched.

        So you say there is no evidence you would accept that confirms Salaita’s claims, but you also have no reliable evidence whatsoever to deny them.

        Here is a possible indication.
        http://chaimsimons.net/baruchgoldstein07.html
        It is intended to consider the possibility that Goldstein’s attack that killed a large number of palestinians at machpelah prevented a massacre by arabs.

        Due to the large numbers of Arabs arriving within a short space of time, the soldiers at the gate were only able to do a body search on a small percentage – perhaps about 12 percent – of the men.[199] According to Second Lieutenant Rotem Ravivi, who at the time was Duty Officer of the Cave of Machpelah Company, a search was made only on those Arab men who appeared to the guards to be suspicious characters.[200] No search whatsoever was made on the 300 Arab women – there were not even any women soldiers in the area to carry out such a search.[201] In any case, the orders stated that women were not to be searched.[202]

        In this one location, the standard procedure was to search all palestinians, but when there were too many they let the excess go through unsearched, and on this day they were not prepared to search the women. This was considered a mistake.

        I read about a woman reservist who volunteered with the border patrol to do mainly cavity searches. She said it was stressful but somebody had to do it. If they couldn’t get a woman to do searches on women at crossings, the men would have to do it themselves. The link is gone, though.

      • bor August 31, 2014 at 10:27 pm | #

        Well J,

        Some Zionists are liars and some Zionists aren’t. Some Jews are liars and some are not. Some Palestinians are liars and some are not. Some Americans are liars and some are not. Should I continue or was that just a silly claim by you?

        I repeat. A lawyer who is responsible for Israel’s airports was testifying before Israel’s parliament about this matter. He agreed, in the same meeting, to have Arab members of that parliament come to give the equivalent of sensitivity training to airport security employees. Furthermore, this meeting reflects precisely what the other two consultants said, except that all three are speaking in different fora at different times and under different interview circumstances. And, all these men are or were in positions of responsibility. So, yes, it’s possible that they’re all lying, or it’s possible that Israeli security folks at international crossings have a deep perverse sexual view of Arabs and Muslims which they satisfy with anal and vaginal probes of virtually all Palestinians. I leave it to you to consider which is the common sense suggestion here and which is the demonizing, crazed one.

        As for bringing up Baruch Goldstein, something that happened decades ago, I understand that it’s tough for the anti-Israel crowd to find other names to target and you have my sympathy on this count, but Salaita was specifically saying “It is well known by Palestinians that anytime one of them enters or exits Israel” and your example (which doesn’t hold water if you know anything about the situation there today) is about internal security. Furthermore, checking people is not the same as giving them an anal or vaginal probe.

        As for having people who were hired for cavity searches, that is virtually impossible, You most likely read about a female soldier or security person whose job was to only inspect those females who are to be inspected in this way. Since the Israeli airport guys all say that for the most part the job involves QUESTIONING people, this still doesn’t address Salaita’s false claims.

      • J Thomas September 1, 2014 at 6:39 am | #

        Bor, you argue that links which show evidence you don’t like should be dismissed because the sources are biased against Israel. I point out that the sources you do like are biased toward Israel. Where will we get unbiased sources?

        You argue that biased reports from airports is all that counts, but most palestinians who go through Israeli checkpoints do not go through airports. So even if we could trust the airport reports, they would not matter.

        Yes, of course I read about a female soldier whose job was only to inspect palestinian women that way at checkpoints. That’s what I said.

        You have produced one single claim by Salaita which you want to disprove, but so far you have given no real evidence.

      • bor September 1, 2014 at 3:57 pm | #

        “You have produced one single claim by Salaita which you want to disprove, but so far you have given no real evidence.”

        Well, if the standard is that a testimony given to a Knesset committee by a government employee in charge of a border crossing and that was reported in multiple newspapers including Ha’aretz and US News doesn’t offer sufficient “real evidence,” or having three different people who know the “big picture” because they had/have senior administrative roles and who all agree on similar points in entirely different interviews at different times, don’t count as evidence, then I guess there is little I can do to satisfy you.

        On the other hand, you are perfectly willing to accept an assertion by Salaita for which he offers absolutely zero evidence although it is placed in an academic book where he provides citations for other information.

        Here: “It is well known that virtually all pro-Palestinian activists have a subconscious desire to rape Jewish men and women, in order to quench their desire for ‘forbidden fruit.”

        Go ahead and disprove that statement. I just made it up. Use your own standard for evidence while seeking to refute this claim. This should be interesting.

        Salaita is a political hack. His book is essentially a political diatribe on Israel, Israeli Jews and their supporters (he focuses on Jewish supporters). There are sections of this intellectually impoverished work that would barely pass muster with any serious scholar who doesn’t have a political axe to grind. Along with inane sections of this book that attack groups like StandWithUS (in a book about Israel’s “dead soul”!!) and a Sacha Baron Cohen film (pages and pages of rambling nonsense), Salaita decided to thrown in an assertion about Israeli anal and vaginal searches of Palestinians used as domineering tools by the perverse Israelis – men and women – working at international border crossings whose demeaning actions are driven by underlying sexual proclivities that have something to do with Arabs and Muslims (one can only weep at the impoverished sexual lives of those Israelis’ ancestors who had lived in European countries and virtually never got to even see Arabs and Muslims).

        I understand trying to defend Salaita’s right to write this crap, and I understand trying to defend his right to let all of his Jewish and non-Jewish Zionist students know he thinks very poorly of them (and claiming there’s “no evidence” that he would ever mistreat such students), and I understand those who are trying to protect his prospective employment at a new university. You and the others are better off just emphasizing those things about him because if you’re trying to defend his made-up lies and his “scholarship,” you’ll just end up embarrassing yourself. Let it go. Stick to the “it’s unfair to make him lose his job” story. At least there, there’s something to debate.

  9. Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant August 28, 2014 at 5:19 pm | #

    There seems to be some interest in the accusation that Israeli security forces may be performing what some would call invasive body searches on Palestinian travelers arriving at checkpoints. That interest seems to rest on a presumed seldomness or even unlikelihood of such offensive security practices.

    As well, a request for sourcing where such practices have been chronicled and made available for public information has been made by more than commenter at this post.

    I would like to present the readers with one source where one may find such stories. I leave it to the reader to judge for herself the trustworthiness of the stories and of those who relate them.

    If one seeks citation, one may begin here: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/strip-searches.html

    Only because the concern is occasioned by a Salaita reference, and because I am not by nature a cynical person, I will refrain from any accusation of an indulgence in the prurient interest.

    [Smartypants reply: “You mean Salaita’s, right?”]

    [My answer: “No, I mean everyone, not just Salaita.”]

    • Ash August 29, 2014 at 4:14 pm | #

      Thank you, Donald. These citations will come in very handy.

      • Bor August 30, 2014 at 11:56 pm | #

        This isn’t a citation. It’s a link to an anti-Israel website that may or may not have compiled truthful or untruthful complaints about Israel. It most certainly does not prove Salaita’s claims.

        But I’m sure it will be “useful.” Why bother with facts when you have propaganda?

      • Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant September 2, 2014 at 10:46 am | #

        Thank you. And “bor” is right, this link is not a “citation” (although I called it that) — its purpose is for reference. The journalistic sourcing is global, so it is hard to find what “bor” would call its anti-Israel bias — especially since some of the journalism is provided by Israeli news outlets. But that is the default response for the flummoxed “hasbarist” these days, is it not?

        Also, I had planned to reply directly to some of “bor”‘s entries but some of you have already done that work, so I think I stick to just one claim s/he has made. S/He seems to think that Abu Gharib in Iraq was merely a “one-off” — as if the crimes of state committed by its agents (and private contractors) undertaking the project of imperial occupation could never be more than the fevered allegations by an unpatriotic lot of anti-American (and anti-Israel) types (leftie libtards who sympathize with America’s enemies). There are far too many news outlets, American and not, that have gotten around to the project of documenting the crime of torture, multiply committed, by American military and security agents in Iraq and Afghanistan for us to even take “bor”‘s “one-off” thesis seriously. “Bor” insults us by even floating such an idea when s/he writes “When the Americans sitting in Salaita’s classroom hear about Abu Gharaib, they will justifiably be upset with their fellow Americans, but they will treat this prison as a one-off situation.” Bor has NEVER been in Salaita’s classroom, and s/he is in NO position to determine the thinking of those students who have — and who seek to be.

        But for purposes of countering the “one-off” claim, here is a very compelling piece of mainstream reportage that covers the abuse of militants, insurgents and just plain old civilians by American forces in Afghanistan (not Iraq). It is pretty horrific stuff: http://feature.rollingstone.com/feature/a-team-killings-afghanistan-special-forces .

        Regarding Salaita, I must say that the quality of “hasbara” is getting more worse everyday, if what appears here is any indication. Not that the quality of “hasbara” bears any relevence to the institutional imperatives and interests of UIUC, its students, its staff, and the project (whatever that is) of higher education in a democracy, mind you.

    • Ash August 31, 2014 at 10:14 am | #

      For the benefit of Bor, seeing as I can’t actually reply to his comment below:

      Did you actually look at the link? Because if you had, you would know that many of those examples were taken from B’Tselem & Defence For Children International reports as well as newspapers. Or are you seriously going to try and tarnish the likes of B’Tselem and Haaretz as anti-Israel?! You do realise that your constant (and irritatingly predictable) cries of “anti-Israel”/”anti-semitism” only serve to discredit your own position, not to mention the fact that such an approach trivialises actual anti-semitism and makes it harder to fight.

      • bor August 31, 2014 at 5:42 pm | #

        First of all, I happen to be a person who is extremely cautious about using the term anti-Semitism. If I’ve used it against Salaita, I’ve done so after very precisely explaining why I’ve done so.

        I have no idea what your problem with “anti-Israel” is. Some people are opposed to Israel, its existence and its existence in its present political context. Many BDSers, for example, fit that description and the movement itself most definitely fits this definition.

        As for Defense for Children International, its founder is Rifat Kassis who is a well known anti-Israel activist who is listed as an author of the Kairos Document which essentially seeks to claim that Jews have no right to Israel on a theological basis. So no, I don’t take Defense for Children International seriously and neither should any other serious person.

        Finally, regarding your point about the link itself. I noted that it wasn’t a reliable citation because it is a biased organization. You would furthermore understand that it isn’t reliable because even if you have 200 people tell their story of supposed mal-treatment at Israeli border crossings, if you have 20 million people crossing the borders annually and 2-3 million of them are Palestinian or of Palestinian descent, then this becomes nothing more than anecdotal. Which is precisely my point about Salaita and his claim about how a Palestinian is likely to undergo a vaginal and anal probe. It isn’t scholarship. It is merely an attempt to besmirch Jewish border and airport guards.

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