Below is a line by line reading of their media statement.

First, it’s hard to know if the people who wrote this press release actually believe what they wrote. The points they make against the ad are so off the mark, and often offensive, it’s hard to believe anyone could write them sincerely. (I’m deleting the names on the release because I don’t think it’s fair to blame them. I think people at the top should be held accountable for such nonsense.)

The release header:

Saying something over and over again doesn’t make it true. The Bay Area JCRC, and local offices of the ADL and the AJC, are not synonymous with the “Bay Area Jewish Community.” In fact, while the Jewish Community Relations Council claims to represent Bay Area Jews, they won’t release the number or names of groups they represent. That certainly makes one wonder if the number is embarrassingly small. And it’s likely shrinking. There is no shortage of Jews around here, from a wide political spectrum, who would be appalled to be associated with an attack on a Muslim group for using a word that Israeli officials use regularly. (More on that later.)

First we see the predictable talking point about initiatives that seek to pressure Israel to abide by international law seeking to “divide the community.” The irony of course, is that actually the community is pretty united, certainly increasingly so. On campuses, for example, over and over again you have a veritable rainbow of organizations backing these initiatives –including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, secular, Southeast Asian, Latino, African American and so forth, all united-increasingly opposed to “coalitions” of a handful of similar and non-diverse groups. (Kind of like those UN votes for Palestinian rights where nearly every country in the world stands on one side, and Israel, the US, Palau and Micronesia stand on the other.)

This is the gist—the JCRC and ADL claim the ad is essentially a hate crime designed to delegitimze Israel’s existence. This is the de facto talking point these days; it is intimidating language, used for lack of a good argument. It goes like this:

It doesn’t really matter what you say or do, the answer always is, “you REALLY want to destroy Israel” (or delegitimize it, which is supposed to be a roundabout way to destroy Israel). Dig a little deeper, and according to the 6 million dollar Israel Action Network, which openly spies on groups like Jewish Voice for Peace* and provides talking points and strategy to defenders of Israeli government policy, the aim of delegitimization is to “isolate Israel as a pariah state and reject the notion of a two-state solution.” If that were at all true, you’d think they’d go after the original two-state solution killers– the settlers, the Israeli government and Bibi Netanyahu whose party openly opposes a two-state solution. But nary a peep. Their harsh condemnations are reserved only for those trying to end Israel’s ongoing violations of international law.

The ad’s false claims diminish the suffering of the millions of people who were truly subjected to apartheid. The term “apartheid” describes the systematic oppression of the racial majority population by South Africa’s minority through comprehensive racial discrimination.  In sharp contrast to Apartheid South Africa, Israel is a diverse democratic country that affords equal political and civil rights to all its citizens.

Israeli human rights groups have much to say about the very unequal apportioning of rights to Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, but why bother to argue the obvious? Instead, let’s just take one of the organizations behind this press release that defines apartheid for South Africans (because really, how dare Archbishop Tutu do so). Michelle Goldberg wrote in The Daily Beast about the ADL’s moral standing on defining South Africa, describing the NYT’s Sasha Polakow Suransky’s (no relation) writing on the issue:

In the 1980s, at a time when Israel maintained close ties with South Africa, the ADL went on the attack against Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. As Sasha Polakow-Suransky reported in his recent book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, ADL National Director Nathan Perlmutter co-authored an article implying that the ANC was “totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israel and anti-American.” The ADL sent spies into the American anti-apartheid movement, as well as other movements critical of right-wing American foreign policy. Eventually, the organization was surveilling much of the American left. In 1993, a California police raid on the offices of the ADL and one of its investigators yielded files on Greenpeace, the NAACP, Act Up, New Jewish Agenda, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and several Democratic politicians, among hundreds of others. The ADL eventually settled a class-action lawsuit brought by several of its targets.

The ADL apparently had no problem with Apartheid South Africa when it existed, but now they claim authority to dispute the many South Africans, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who decry the many similarities between that regime and Israel’s occupation.

The release, again:

Finally, and here’s the heart of the matter: if calling AMP’s use of the term “apartheid” is, as the release describes it, “misleading, inflammatory, divisive, offensive and bigoted,” where is the AJC’s, ADL’s and JCRC’s outrage about these Israelis who have used the same term to describe the decades-long and ever-expanding Israeli occupation? Surely they didn’t miss these statements, as attuned as they are to the “A” word. But once again—it’s perfectly alright for high ranking Israelis to regularly use the word apartheid, but it’s not OK for Muslims to do so? What kind of message about bigotry does that send?

An event is taking place in New York City on April 4^th to discuss the following questions: Is Israel—or can it be—a democracy? Is there—or can there be—equality in Israel? Can a Jewish state be democratic? The current realities in Palestine/Israel, and deep concerns about justice and equality, make this conversation urgent. Two high-profile rabbis in New York City played key, and starkly contrasting, roles as the planning for this event unfolded.

One rabbi did not want the conversation to happen at all—at least not in any space over which he had control. The very mention of BDS in the flyer announcing the event—that this panel had grown out of questions asked at an earlier panel on BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions]—made the conversation, in his words, “beyond the pale;” it was not going to take place in his “home.” And so he had his assistant cancel the contract the synagogue had signed to rent out its space for the event. (Only when we held him to account with his contractual liability did he grudgingly back down, telling us he wished we would go elsewhere and demanding that we not use the name of the synagogue even as part of the address in our promotional materials lest the synagogue suffer “reputational harm” for which we would be held responsible.)

But there is another rabbi in this story—the one who opened her arms and her synagogue and said: “I am disturbed by the trend in the Jewish community to censor discussions about Israel and Palestine. I feel like it’s my moral responsibility to make sure this burning issue that’s facing us as a Jewish people gets a complete debate and discussion.”

What is the message we want to convey to our children during this Passover season, a holiday that embodies a commitment to asking questions and pursuing freedom and justice? Do we want them to learn that being Jewish means shutting down conversations that might challenge us to act more ethically? That some questions about what we do and how we treat others are “beyond the pale” and so we must not address them together as a community? Or do we want them to experience being Jewish as encouraging honest and genuine and open discussion about hard issues that might help us discover how we can support what is just and what is right? Which rabbi’s words would we like to resonate with our children?

As the Israeli occupation becomes more and more entrenched, as basic civil liberties and human rights are increasingly being eroded, and as the Israeli government continues its expansionist policies in the name of the Jewish people, aren’t questions like the ones above screaming for our attention? As the Palestinian people continue to struggle for liberation, we can and should demand no less from our rabbis and from our institutions than a full commitment to asking these tough and urgent questions and challenging ourselves about the ways we can most meaningfully participate in pursuing justice. And what better time to insist upon this than during Passover?
__________________________________________

Donna Nevel, a community psychologist and educator, is a long-time organizer for Palestinian/Israeli peace and justice. She is one of 15 cosponsors of a program on April 4th being held at 7 PM at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City.

Exciting times indeed.

A surprising, even thrilling mix of prominent New York Jews wants to have a discussion about what until recently has been the ultimate unaskable question: can Israel be both a democracy and a Jewish state? And they want to have that discussion in a prominent shul.

The Upper West Side synagogue Ansche Chesed agrees to the forum, until the senior rabbi gets wind of the event and decides to cancel the contract, he says, based on the concern that the topic of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) may, possibly, might, perhaps, could potentially…come up in the conversation. (Read the whole breaking story here.)

But the goal-posts for acceptable discourse are shifting rapidly and the tale has a great ending. Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST), unafraid of a good debate on an issue people are dying to discuss, has stepped up and will host the April 4 event. (Download flyer here.)

Read below the letter by the ideologically diverse, influential supporters of the forum on Israel and democracy- people like Kathleen Peratis, MJ Rosenberg, Rebecca Vilkomerson (Jewish Voice for Peace), Letty Cottin Pogrebin, James Schamus, Donna Nevel, Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights), Melanie Kaye-Kantrowitz, Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark and more.

While all’s well that ends well, this repeated public playing out of our communal Jewish dysfunction (Brooklyn College etc..) and moral confusion is still a tad heart-breaking to watch. Though it is nothing like the heart-break of torn flesh and crushed homes that is the (still unacknowledged-in-the-Jewish-community) Nakba, which so many Palestinians are doomed to live again and again each day, like a nightmarish Ground Hog Day. Three cheers for those who have won the battle of putting every moral issue on the table, but the war is far from over.

@CecilieSurasky on Twitter

Open Letter to the Jewish Community: A Synagogue Tried to Shut Us Down

A few weeks ago, Brooklyn College stood up against a tsunami of whacked out, only-in-NY extremist-Israel politics and refused to either cancel or sever ties with a planned campus talk on the nonviolent Palestinian-led human rights movement known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). (Pictured: Jewish Voice for Peace board member Donna Nevel at Brookyln College Students for Justice in Palestine press conference.)

So it was just a matter of time before the pro-occupation crazies came back with something else equally guaranteed to waste valuable public resources and strike fear in the hearts of cash-strapped students.

This time, the notorious CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld of Tony Kushner incident fame, is back leading a call to sue Brooklyn College for aiding and abetting discrimination against Jews— if Brooklyn College doesn’t investigate and “change policies”.

What happened at the talk on BDS?

Turns out that in a room full of students, community-members and teachers; supporters and detractors; Jews, Muslims and Christians and others—4 students, who happen to be Jewish, were asked to leave by school security during the talk by Palestinian human rights leader Omar Barghouti and superstar philosopher Judith Butler (who is also Jewish.)

Weisenfeld and company are claiming these students were removed because they were Jewish, and they have an attorney threatening to sue the school using Title VI, the landmark federal race and ethnicity-based anti-discrimination legislation that was recently revised to allow Jews to sue. (More on that later.)

Brooklyn College’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter says, reasonably, the students were removed because they were disrupting the event for those around them and did not respond to requests to quiet down. (On any other issue, such removals are standard. In this case, it’s a lawsuit and a press blitz.)

Well, Brooklyn College’s counsel is investigating, as they must with such charges, but here’s the shandah about the whole thing. We know the charge that they were removed because they are Jewish is demonstrably false. In fact it’s ridiculous. Threatening to use Title VI in what is clearly a conflict around differing political views is just one more debasement of the Civil Rights Act, under which title VI is a provision.

As Naomi Zeveloff explained in the Forward article, Coming Up Empty on Title VI:

Historically, Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was used during the 1960s to desegregate public schools in the South. It prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin, but does not include religion as a protected category. But in October 2010, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a letter saying that Title VI would henceforth cover members of religious groups on the basis of shared ethnic characteristics, thus opening the door for Jews to file complaints. Several existing cases involving campus anti-Semitism were grandfathered-in then under the newly-redefined rules.

Title VI discrimination complaints can be filed in federal court as civil cases or, more commonly, with the DOE, where they are subjected to administrative review. But anti-Semitism cases put before a court may face a more uncertain review. Unlike the DOE, the U.S. Supreme Court has not, to date, ruled on whether members of religious groups fall under the law’s purview if they have perceived ethnic characteristics.

Which ever route a complainant chooses, in order to succeed, she must show that the institution in question was remiss in protecting a student from harassment due to her race or ethnicity — not just that an act of harassment occurred. A school found in violation can face a range of measures, including loss of its federal funding.

But here’s the kicker– proponents of Title VI inclusion of Jews as a protected category claim they are concerned about anti-Semitism on campuses—an obviously laudable concern. But the successful campaign to open the door to lawsuits from Jewish students was initiated by the pro-settler extremist group, the Zionist Organization of America (now in disarray and without a 501c3 for failing to file tax returns) and championed by various Israel lobby groups. The goal was to use Title VI as a way to criminalize political speech that is critical of Israel by in essence reclassifying it as hate speech.

That’s why, as Zeveloff reported, out of ten cases alleging anti-Semitism filed thus far under the newly expanded Title VI, not one pertaining to Israel has found success.

Last week, at the press conference that launched this latest wave of idiocy, Weisenfeld brought along neal Neal Sher – former Special war Crimes Prosecutor, US Dept. of Justice who said:

I wish to make clear that the paradigm where some groups were “exempt” from the protections afforded by Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act. These federal statutes afford Jewish students the same protection and rights to a safe and unhindered educational environment as their peers in other ethnic groupings. I am prepared to commence legal proceeding s against the City University of New York if guidelines are not adopted which would prevent the violations we witnessed recently at Brooklyn College of the civil and constitutional rights of Jewish students at a Brooklyn College event sponsored by its Political Science department.

Seriously? The room was full of Jews. 50% of the speakers were Jews.

It’s not enough for professional extremist bullies to try to waste everyone’s time and scare people into submission by fabricating enormous crises out of routine, everyday and sometimes uncomfortable life on campuses.

But just as shocking, they have to cheapen the charges of anti-Semitism so grotesquely, by throwing the label whenever possible and hoping it will stick, that they should be held responsible for desensitizing an entire generation to real anti-Semitism. Next time I try to talk about an encounter with real anti-Semitic attitudes and I am greeted with an eye-roll, I’ll know who is to blame.

Meanwhile, the Jewish Public Affairs Council endorsed Title VI and called on Congress to pass laws to strengthen protections, but to their credit expressed concerns about preserving First Amendment rights and freedom of speech.

But one person who isn’t worried is Ken Marcus, the former federal staffer who helped push through the Title VI change, and then left the government to make a career out of… pushing Title VI:

“It is not just that it is failing. It hasn’t really been tried,” said Ken Marcus, a former staff director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “I would say that the Title VI campaign is barely in its infancy.” Marcus’s new organization, the Louis D. Brandeis Center, focuses on civil rights and Jewish students. The OCR recently tossed Marcus’s complaint at Barnard.

They may have had no success so far, but the Brandeis Center is hiring more attorneys now in preparation for more lawsuits on campuses.

But apparently viewers of TV Ontario can’t watch it, despite the fact that it was previously on the schedule. It is not clear why they cancelled, but one can surmise from the detailed communication in Citizen Action Monitor that closed door talks must have gone nowhere and TV Ontario folded without, as is often the case, the decency to tell the truth.

That should come as no surprise. In many countries in which The Promise appeared, it was the subject of extensive letter-writing campaigns from Jewish organizations who complained that it was anti-Semitic and trafficked in anti-Jewish stereotypes while making Palestinians overly sympathetic.

I have no judgement to make yet because I haven’t seen it, but these people do:

Christina Patterson,The Independent: “…beautifully shot and extremely well written. It is also extremely balanced…”

Rachel Cooke in the New Statesmen: “…the best thing you are likely to see on TV this year, if not this decade.”

Liel Leibovitz in the Jewish magazine Tablet: “Contrary to these howls of discontent, the show is a rare and riveting example of telling Israel’s story on screen with accuracy, sensitivity, and courage”.

Marcus Dysch, The Jewish Chronicle Online, “A senior Israeli diplomat says that a drama series about British Mandate Palestine is the worst example of anti-Israel propaganda he has ever seen on television.”

The film’s writer and director Peter Kosminsky (White Oleander, Wuthering Heights) is Jewish. And it actually showed in the NY Jewish Community Center as part of their Other Israel festival. It also showed in Israel.
Just not in Ontario.

You can watch the first episode in its entirety here.

H/T http://citizenactionmonitor.wordpress.com/

-Cecilie Surasky
You can now follow me on Twitter @CecilieSurasky

Welcome back to the 21st century NYC LGBT Center!

The Center just posted a statement overturning their absurd two-year ban on allowing Israel-Palestine related programming, which led to the barring of renowned lesbian thinker Sarah Schulman. Now it’s time to write director Glennda Testone (glennda@gaycenter.org) a note of congratulations for finally ending this embarrassing ban— along with a request that Islamophobe Michael Lucas and others who fuel anti-Palestinian bigotry be responded to appropriately under anti-hate policies. ( Lucas lobbied for the ban in response to a Palestinian rights group’s attempt to rent at the center.)

Now the bad news:

Speaking of anti-Palestinian bigotry, within seconds of the NYC LGBT Center’s posting of their new policy, four NY elected officials, led by NYC Council Speaker Christine C. “I just can’t get enough free trips to Israel” Quinn, issued a NY Jewish Community Relations Council inspired statement supporting the decision but then reiterating their irrational and non-fact based terror of a Palestinian-led nonviolent movement to pressure Israel into respecting the human rights of the people it occupies! Weirder, it reads like a Saturday Night Live parody of surreal Israel-obsequiousness. I mean, it’s hard to imagine these pols similarly tripping over themselves to defend the United States from criticism. And why are they even commenting on another country? They are NY politicians. (photo above: 5-17-10 - Michael Miller, Matt Maryles, Christine Quinn, Jimmy Van Bramer, Dan Halloran and Asaf Shariv at the kickoff of Celebrate Israel Week.)

I’m usually suspicious of conspiracy theories, unless of course they involve Scientology!, but you really have to wonder if this all-out scorched earth campaign against a nonviolent justice movement is simply because Israel expansionists want Palestinians to go back to armed struggle and suicide bombing so Israel can crush them and just take the land in one fell swoop, with the world cheering them on. That’s really the only thing that can explain the insane backlash to pretty basic tactics that have been used by social justice advocates since.. forever.

Here’s the whole, difficult to read statement below from the NY electeds, sent to us from a parallel universe where a country that repeatedly flouts international law using one of the world’s great armies, and its bigoted proxies ( here, here and here), portray themselves as victims, while people who are working frankly just to level the playing field for Palestinians are called purveyors of hate. H/T NY QUAIA

(Phan Nguyen over at Mondoweiss has this must-read article detailing the NY JCRC’s free junket racket devoted to ensuring NY elected officials mouth hasbara lines about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, on demand.)

Joint Statement by NYC Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, NYS Assembly Member Deborah Glick, NYS Senator Brad Hoylman, and NYC Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer

Re: New LGBT Community Center Space Use Guidelines

“We support the new Space Use guidelines, terms and conditions being implemented by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center. Their decision to allow groups to have open discussion and to create a resolution process to address complaints of potential hate-related speech is the correct approach. Under the Center’s new guidelines, all parties will have access to rent space to organize around LGBT issues, and the Center will remain a safe space, where hate-related speech will not be tolerated. This will allow the Center staff and board to promote its core mission of providing health and wellbeing services to our community, in addition to providing a safe and secure forum for issues relevant to NYC’s LGBT community.

That said, we want to make abundantly clear that we categorically reject attempts by any organization to use the Center to delegitimize Israel and promote an anti-Israel agenda. We adamantly oppose any and all efforts to inappropriately inject the Center into politics that are not the core of their important mission.

We vehemently oppose the absurd accusations by some groups that Israel is engaged in so-called “pinkwashing”. We find this charge offensive and fundamentally detrimental to the global cause of LGBT equality. These accusations should be understood as just one part of the arsenal of those who seek to completely discredit the state of Israel altogether. In fact, Israel’s highly laudable record in advancing LGBT rights deserves praise, not scorn. Given the very poor record of much of the world on LGBT issues, we should be celebrating Israel’s – or any country’s – LGBT equality advances. We must always encourage countries with strong records of achievement for our community to be rightly and publicly proud so they may set an example for others. We continue to believe that the boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) movement against Israel is wrongheaded, destructive, and an obstacle to our collective hope for a peaceful two-state solution.

We applaud the Center Board and staff for taking this important step. We now hope everyone will respect the Center as a safe space for open and safe discussions. We hope the Center can move forward and serve the LGBT community as it has always done.”

But no more—the actions of the leadership of New York’s famed LGBT community center are an inexplicable embarrassment, a medieval-era violation of virtually every principle of free thought and queer social understanding: Gay City News just reported that the center has refused to allow the renowned writer Sarah Schulman to speak about her new book, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International because of its topic. (I suppose if she actually just showed up with the books, they’d have to burn them.)

What’s worse, they seem to have folded entirely under the pressure of a hate-monger with deep pockets, right-wing funder and outspoken pornographer Michael “I hate Islam with all my heart” Lucas— instituting a seemingly lifetime ban on Israel/Palestine related anything.

We’ve written extensively about the roots of the controversy here and here, and Lucas’ views and involvement.

The ban was announced 2 years ago by center director Glennda Testone after Lucas, who thinks of himself as Israel’s best friend, boasted that in just 8 hours he got the Center to give the boot to a “Party to End Apartheid” fundraiser. That would be Israeli apartheid, to be clear. (It’s fine to have a difference of opinion, but there’s nothing criminal or discriminatory about the word apartheid, a word BTW frequently used in Israel and Palestine.)

But let’s be clear— the ban isn’t on just any person or group that cares about Palestinian liberation-and presumably an Israeli dating group could meet there without a problem. It’s in effect a ban on the precise people the center is meant to serve, like Palestinian queers who can not separate their dating lives from their occupation or refugee or inequality-filled lives, and Jews and others like Schulman who have absolutely no problem understanding how queer liberation and Palestinian liberation are linked.

As Sarah Schulman told us, “The Occupation is so indefensible and depraved that its supporters censor rather than risk arguments they cannot justify.”

Amazing, Brooklyn College could stand up to a whole swath of NY elected officials threatening to take away their funding if they didn’t didn’t stamp down on free speech for Palestinian rights, but the LGBT center folded in just 8 hours to the threats of a bigot and presumably his equally deep-pocketed friends.

No standing on principle. No attempt to resolve the situation. Just shameful folding to hate.

Worse, looking at Lucas’ (pictured below) track record, openly hating one religious group, if they are Muslim, does notdisqualify one from renting space or dictating policy at the Center. On the other hand, being a hugely influential queer thinker with an anti-racist analysis makes one worthy of an apparently lifetime ban if one dares speaks the P word.

What on earth does this say about New York’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center and how deeply has the LGBTQ establishment has lost its compass if this goes unchallenged?

On April 11, the LGBT Center is having its big fundraising dinner. Would be great to see attendees boycott until the ban is overturned, or at least be reminded of the shameful embarrassment of the ban. If the issue were money, the irony is that many of us would gladly donate to make up for the loss, and the LGBT center would be a hero.

Meanwhile, do like Judith Butler did and write executive director Glennda Testone (Glennda@gaycenter.org) a smart and principled note about why she has to overturn the ban.

-Cecilie Surasky

Well, and wait for the deliciously panicked backlash on this, the first scientific study of Israel and Palestinian textbooks, funded by the U.S. State Department, concluded that the stories about all Palestinian textbooks calling Jews pigs and so forth, are just that, stories. As Bruce Wexler, the Yale psychiatry prof who led the study told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “The type of testimony that’s been presented to Congress and to our national leaders has been one person reading selected passages from the books. As a medical doctor, I don’t make decisions based on that type of information.”

And just as important, though not news to any of us who have friends or family with kids in Israeli schools—Israeli textbooks are a serious mess.

It’s hard not to wonder what Freud would say about all this—the Israel-aligned lobby has for years been justifying daily and violent Israeli dehumanization of Palestinians by making the world believe that Palestinians dehumanize Israelis in their textbooks. In fact, the entire campaign of going before Congress, on TV etc.. and repeatedly reducing all Palestinian children to a few lines in some random horrid textbooks is demonization of the worst kind. (Note other demonization offenders like Hasbara line #6, “They don’t love their children the way we love ours.”) And now there’s proof!

The super science-y study with thousands of data points concluded that, as Naomi Zeveloff reported in the Forward, “for the most part, neither Palestinian nor Israeli schoolbooks demonize the other people or refer to them as subhuman.”

Of course there were a few notable but statistically insignificant exceptions - I love the charmingly retro depiction in an Ultra-Orthodox text of a destroyed Palestinian village, now home to a settlement, as a “nest of murderers.” Wow! (Sadly for us and the OMG factor, the study did not also analyze language to describe Mizrahi Jews from Arab countries, women, gays, and Goyim) And a Palestinian book referred to an Israeli interrogation room as a “slaughterhouse.”

It also turned out, neither Palestinian nor Israeli textbook maps are particularly good about showing, um, reality, but one thing you won’t see in a hearing on Capitol Hill or in an American Jewish Committee brochure, the Israeli schoolbooks are significantly worse: 58% of the Palestinian books don’t mention Israel, it’s all Palestine, but 76% of the Israeli books don’t mention the Palestinian territories— it’s all Israel from the River to the Sea. (Remember when newly minted Israeli Minister of Education Yuli Tamir was greeted with open arms howls of derision when she announced that textbook maps of Israel would actually include the Green Line? That was an idea that went nowhere fast. And of course there is today’s defacto administrative form of annexation via cartography, the new Israeli practice of stamping West Bank visitors’ passports with Judea and Samaria.)

There were more harsh depictions of Jews in Palestinian textbooks (84%) than harsh depictions of Palestinians in ultra-Orthodox (73%) or Israel books (49%). That said, given the fact that Palestinians are still living under occupation and in refugee camps, getting illegally evicted from their homes and losing their orchards, it’s hard to imagine a more surreal demand than asking them to portray their occupiers more nicely.

Because of the central role the textbook argument plays in Israeli government propaganda, look for the science-minded Wexler to get a mini-version of the Dershowitz-perfected Goldstone treatment. It will start with attacks on the methodology and move to personal smears. In fact, the Israeli government has already disavowed the report—which is just so predictable and sad. In a world that made sense, you’d think they’d greet the study with a sigh of relief.

—Cecilie Surasky

We add below the remarks given by Donna Nevel from Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews Say No! at a February 5 press conference.
We also encourage you to go to www.firealandershowitz.org/ and sign our petition against this kind of bullying.

Remarks by Donna Nevel

I am Donna Nevel from Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews Say
No! I am pleased to be here today to have the opportunity
to speak out in support of Students for Justice in Palestine
and all those at Brooklyn College and across the city
concerned with ensuring that bullying and intimidation do
not succeed in denying students and others the right to
engage in critical examination and inquiry of important
political ideas.

What we have seen happening here is yet another example
of an attempt to suppress and vilify voices critical of Israel
and Israeli government policies, a pattern that has become
far too common in this city and nation-wide.

It’s bad enough that Alan Dershowitz and Dov Hikind have
engaged in a smear campaign. We’ve come to expect
that. But city council members who threaten to take away
city funding merely because they disagree with the views
expressed on a college campus should be ashamed of
themselves and should be held accountable for trying to
interfere in this way. And they must not prevail.

About the topic that has become so controversial and
caused so much condemnation- It needs to be made clear
that Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) is a non-
violent response to the Israeli government’s violation of
basic principles of human rights and international law. It is,
in my view, those violations that should be condemned, not
strategies such as BDS that are designed to put an end to
those violations, and the injustices that they inflict on the
Palestinian people.

In the eight years since hundreds of Palestinian civil society
organizations called for BDS — similar to the boycott/
divestment movement against South African apartheid —
it has garnered strong international support. And for good
reason.

It is a common ploy to suggest that criticism of Israel is anti-
Semitic. It is a ploy that trivializes the long and ugly history
of anti-Semitism.

I want to mention that there were over 2,000 signatories to
the Jewish Voice for Peace petition supporting the event and
the President’s decision not to capitulate to those pressuring
the university.

We are heartened that Brooklyn College is resisting the
calls to abandon what higher education should be—a place
for learning, and challenging, and critical thinking, where
students are pushed to imagine and to envision how they
can participate in making the world a better place for all
peoples and for all communities.

With the pervasiveness of Islamophobia and anti-Arab
racism and the targeting of communities of color in NYC,
and with the attempt to silence those whose views on Israel
do not mirror Israeli government or US policy, colleges
standing strong against political opportunism and attempted
coercion are more important than ever.

Chuck Hagel is not exactly my kind of guy. Hagel is an old-school Conservative Republican and his voting record in the Senate lines up pretty well with that image. He was poor on civil rights, favored the rich in economic matters, generally opposed abortion, voted against campaign finance reform, and, despite later opposition, he voted for the Iraq War. Yet the dominant question around his still-only-rumored nomination for Secretary of Defense is how pro-Israel he is.

Hagel is a Realist who would have been quite comfortable on the foreign policy teams of Dwight Eisenhower or George H.W. Bush. Ironically for liberals and leftists, that conservative-Republican school is often much closer in practice to our foreign policy ideals than so-called liberal Democrats tend to be. But in 2012’s version of conservatism, that stance makes him a dangerous character. This is especially true with regard to the issue of US policy toward Israel, where Hagel, while certainly being far from a peace activist, advocates an interest-based, non-ideological approach.

And that is really the nub of the issue. Even for many defenders of Hagel’s nomination, the question of what is best for Israel is a central one. It seems obvious that when considering a Cabinet position in the US government, the questions should be confined to what is best for US interests, whatever each individual thinks those interests might be. But in the bizarre world of Washington around this issue, somehow that is not the case.

President Obama’s potential nomination of Hagel as his next Secretary of Defense can be a complicated question for advocates of Palestinian rights and a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hagel represents, on this one issue, something close to the best attitude we could realistically hope for in the upper levels of Washington. He advocated that the US call for an immediate cease-fire in the 2006 war on Lebanon; he supports the US talking with Hamas; he opposed listing Hezbollah as a terrorist group so they could be spoken with openly; and he opposes military action against Iran. As far as they go, these are certainly positions most of us can agree with.

But they are also the positions that have brought sharp attacks on Hagel, and that’s not surprising; they are positions with which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently disagrees. And what Bibi disagrees with, his friends in the so-called “Israel Lobby” in Washington will zealously attack. Thus, Hagel is anti-Israel, maybe even anti-Semitic.

The tactic is tried and true. AIPAC has remained notably silent on Hagel, allowing the attacks to come from the neoconservative circles, represented by Bill Kristol, Elliot Abrams and others of their ilk. It is a sad comment on the state of political discourse in the United States that, despite their monumental foreign policy failures during the George W. Bush administration, the neocons’ views are still given considerable weight in Washington. And against that weight is Barack Obama, who showed himself in his first term to be a weak leader who tries to avoid confrontation. A December 23 report in the National Journal indicated that Obama may be caving in to the pressure on Hagel.

This is distressingly familiar. In Obama’s first term, he nominated Chas Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council. Freeman, a critic of Israeli policies but, like Hagel, a supporter of Israeli security and the alliance (although not the “special relationship) between Israel and the United States, came under fierce attack and eventually withdrew from consideration for the post. The attacks on Freeman were initially based on his views on Israel, but later were organized as well around his “close relationship” with the Saudi government and a comment he made about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China, which was made in a private e-mail and, according to Freeman, taken out of context.

Hagel, too, has come under fire for other reasons, most notably a remark he made about the 1998 appointment of James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg, the first openly gay ambassador in US history. Hagel questioned the appointment, calling Hormel “openly and aggressively gay,” a remark which, as it should, angered LGBT folks everywhere. But Hagel has had fourteen years to reconsider his views, and in that time a lot of education has happened with many people. Hagel issued an apology and it is worth noting that James Hormel’s initial skepticism of the apology has received a great deal more media coverage than his subsequent statement that the apology was “significant.” Hormel, in a post on his Facebook page, said “I can’t remember a time when a potential presidential nominee apologized for anything. While the timing appears self-serving, the words themselves are unequivocal — they are a clear apology. Since 1998, fourteen years have passed, and public attitudes have shifted — perhaps Sen. Hagel has progressed with the times, too…Sen. Hagel stated in his remarks that he was willing to support open military service and LGBT military families. If that is a commitment to treat LGBT service members and their families like everybody else, I would support his nomination.”

The Human Rights Campaign also recognized Hagel’s apology as significant and closed the book on the issue, but that has not made it go away. No one in Washington, whatever they might say in public, believes the controversy over Hagel has anything to do with his beliefs on LGBT rights any more than anyone here believed that the controversy over Freeman had anything to do with China. This is all about Israel, and, more to the point, the far-right Likud agenda which drives not only the majority in the Knesset but virtually the entirety of the Israel Lobby in the United States.

It is worth noting that the tiny Log Cabin Republican organization suddenly came up with enough funding to take out a full page ad in the New York Times of December 27, denouncing Hagel as “wrong on gay rights, wrong on Israel, wrong on Iran.” It’s not much of a mystery where they got the money to do this.

The Wrong Response

Some have chosen to defend Hagel by arguing that “No, no, no. he really is pro-Israel.” There is some reason for optimism on this point, as one of the leading “liberal hawk” voices on Israel, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg defended Hagel on this basis. But voices that are expected to be more liberal on this issue have also used Hagel’s pro-Israel record as the basis for their defense of him. The Center for American Progress, which has, in the past couple of years, been purged of most of its most critical voices on this issue, came up with a list of pro-Israel statements by Hagel, and J Street, naturally, based its entire defense of Hagel on this point.

While there is certainly some merit to exposing the neocons’ distortions of Hagel’s record, in opposing their efforts by claiming Hagel is really pro-Israel only reinforces the idea that Israeli approval of top US officials is a worthy litmus test for such appointments. Of course, even the neocons won’t explicitly claim that US officials should meet Israeli/Israel Lobby approval, but in practice this is not only what they believe, in practice, it may not be absolute, but the Lobby’s voice on such appointments carries a great deal of weight.

This is not a left or right, peace or war issue. Peace and Palestine solidarity activists have no illusions about the potential for individuals who share our views to be appointed to Cabinet positions in the US government. But that hardly means we need to continue to tolerate an environment, which has persisted in Washington for too many years now, where a neoconservative view of the US-Israel relationship can, if not actually exercise a veto, make appointments to Cabinet posts very difficult if they don’t approve of the candidates.

This time, the Lobby’s actions have stirred some significant responses. Americans for Peace Now managed to oppose the smear campaign against Hagel without pleading his “pro-Israel” bona fides, but on the merits of his qualifications. So did a list of retired US diplomats, including several former Ambassadors to Israel. Andrew Sullivan launched a spirited attack on the neocons’ tactics here in the Daily Beast.

In the New York Times, Tom Friedman split the difference, both defending Hagel as being good for Israel and arguing that this is not the proper basis for deciding on a Secretary of Defense. Long-time Jewish affairs DC correspondent James Besser points to the cliff the Lobby is heading towards by taking shots at people like Hagel. On the other hand, the conservative Cato Institute also blasts the Lobby’s campaign against Hagel.

All of this adds up to a strong case for Obama to stand up and pick Hagel. Several Senators, most notably Republican Lindsey Graham (R-SC), have implied that Hagel would have a difficult road to confirmation. But the reality is that there is a great deal of backing for Hagel, he is well-respected in the Senate, Republicans would look very silly if they vote en masse against one of their own and Democrats will have a tough time opposing Obama on this. In other words, the reason the Lobby is going at this so hard now is that this is when Hagel is much more vulnerable.

This is a real opportunity to deal the Lobby a big loss. One doesn’t have to like Chuck Hagel to see the value in that.