[Jewish Peace News(JPN)] In N.Y., Sparks Fly Over Criticism of Israel

Sunday, October 15, 2006, [Jewish Peace News(JPN)]

Sparks Fly at Israel Criticism

[JPN Commentary: The Anti Defamation League is at it again, attempting to squelch criticism of Israel, as well as criticism of itself as one of the organizations who stifle free and open debate on issues to do with Israel/Palestine. ADL and the American Jewish Committee's denial that they engaged in an effort to cancel Tony Judt's speech at the Polish consulate, and claiming that he is engaging in "wild conspiracy theories" is not remotely credible, since this is hardly the first time they are at it. ADL, for one, doesn't limit itself to obstructing participation of only the most visible critics of Israeli policies, but has, for example, blocked participation in debates on divestment by Jewish Voice for Peace members (Mitchell Plitnick and myself are two I'm aware of, and perhaps there were others). Sad to say, such tactics often achieve at least their immediate aim, and it's our job to find ways to bring this behavior to light, and to make it too costly for these self-anointed cops on the beat to keep engaging in such tactics. We also need to find ways to empower various civil organizations to sponsor open debates, and to resist pressure from the Israel lobby. Those of you who would like to watch/hear the debate on the "Israel Lobby" which was sponsored by the London Review of books - where Tony Judt was one of the panelists - can visit here. RG]

In N.Y., Sparks Fly Over Israel Criticism

Polish Consulate Says Jewish Groups Called To Oppose
Historian

Michael Powell, 9 October 2006

www.washingtonpost.com

NEW YORK -- Two major American Jewish organizations helped block a prominent New York University historian from speaking at the Polish consulate here last week, saying the academic was too critical of Israel and American Jewry.

The historian, Tony Judt, is Jewish and directs New York University's Remarque Institute, which promotes the study of Europe. Judt was scheduled to talk Oct. 4 to a nonprofit organization that rents space from the consulate. Judt's subject was the Israel lobby in the United States, and he planned to argue that this lobby has often stifled honest debate.

An hour before Judt was to arrive, the Polish Consul General Krzysztof Kasprzyk canceled the talk. He said the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee had called and he quickly concluded Judt was too controversial.

"The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure," Kasprzyk said. "That's obvious -- we are adults and our IQs are high enough to understand that."

Judt, who was born and raised in England and lost much of his family in the Holocaust, took strong exception to the cancellation of his speech. He noted that he was forced to cancel another speech later this month at Manhattan College in the Bronx after a different Jewish group had complained. Other prominent academics have described encountering such problems, in some cases more severe, stretching over the past three decades.

The pattern, Judt says, is unmistakable and chilling.

"This is serious and frightening, and only in America -- not in Israel-- is this a problem," he said. "These are Jewish organizations that believe they should keep people who disagree with them on the Middle East away from anyone who might listen."

The leaders of the Jewish organizations denied asking the consulate to block Judt's speech and accused the professor of retailing "wild conspiracy theories" about their roles. But they applauded the consulate for rescinding Judt's invitation.

"I think they made the right decision," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "He's taken the position that Israel shouldn't exist. That puts him on our radar."

David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, took a similar view. "I never asked for a particular action; I was calling as a friend of Poland," Harris said. "The message of that evening was going to be entirely contrary to the entire spirit of Polish foreign policy."

Judt has crossed rhetorical swords with the Jewish organizations on two key issues. Over the past few years he has written essays in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books and in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz arguing that power in Israel has shifted to religious
fundamentalists and territorial zealots, that woven into Zionism is a view of the Arab as the irreconcilable enemy, and that Israel might not survive as
a communal Jewish state.

The solution, he argues, lies in a slow and tortuous walk toward a binational and secular state.

He has, of late, defended an academic paper -- co-authored by professor Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and John J. Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago -- which argues the American Israel lobby has pushed policies that are not in the United States' best interests and in fact often encourage Israel to engage in self-destructive behavior.

These are deeply controversial views -- Foxman of the ADL and writer Christopher Hitchens, among others, have attacked the Walt and Mearsheimer paper as anti-Semitic. And Judt's advocacy of a binational state has drawn a flock of critics, the more angry of whom accuse him of "pandering to genocide" as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America put it. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum said Judt was pursuing "genocide liberalism."

Foxman has referred to Judt's views of Israel as "an offensive caricature."

The Mearsheimer and Walt paper, however, has drawn praise in some quarters in Israel, particularly on the left. So, too some Israeli writers, not least Israeli historian and social critic Amos Elon, have praised Judt's writings on Israel. Nor are Judt's arguments without historical precedent: Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist and political philosopher Noam Chomsky, who is Jewish, has advocated a binational solution in Israel, a view that three decades ago sparked such anger that police stoo guard at his college talks. More recently, the ADL repeatedly accused DePaul University professor Norman G. Finkelstein, who is Jewish and strongly opposes Israeli policies, of being a "Holocaust denier." These charges have proved baseless.

"There is an often organized and often spontaneous attempt to marginalize anyone in the Jewish world who offers a critique of Israeli policy," said Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the liberal magazine Tikkun. "It's equated with anti-Semitism and Israel denial."

Foxman says such complaints are silly. "Nobody has called Judt an anti-Semite," Foxman said. "People who are critical of Israel and of the Jewish people often flaunt their Jewishness. Why isn't that an issue?"

Judt replies that he only reluctantly talks of his Jewishness, in no small part to inoculate himself against charges of anti-Semitism. "For many, the way to be Jewish in this country is to aggressively assert that the Holocaust is your identification tag," Judt said. "I know perfectly well my history, but it never occurred to me that my most prominent identity was as a Jew."

[JPN Commentary: Knesset member Azmi Bishara offers a scathing and eloquent critique of the political conditions the US is fostering in the Palestinian territories and throughout the Arab world. He describes the situation of the Palestinian people as having fallen to a new low, where the US-driven economic blockade is turning desperate people against each other. The political achievements of the Palestinians - a sense of national unity and a collective goal of liberation - are being effaced by the brute, basic need for food. The threat of starvation is being used as a weapon to reverse a democratic decision. Meanwhile, corrupt and brutal Arab elites who rule in the absence of any popular mandate are dubbed "moderates" by Washington because they oppose the Hamas government.

Bishara widens his analysis: where we see the US footprint in the region, we see a degradation of the public sphere; democratic or even national aspirations are replaced by a struggle just to survive. We see tribal warfare in Iraq; bread fights in Palestine; corruption and abuse throughout the region. Bishara readily puts an end to the myth that the US has any democratizing influence or intent in the Middle East.

At the same time, the existence of democratic structures of governance within the US itself gives US citizens both the real ability and urgent responsibility to oppose and bring a halt to these abuses abroad. JN]

--
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.