Ran HaCohen, Israel, a New Decade: Antiwar
By Ran HaCohen, Antiwar.com – 10 April 2010
I turn on the television just before dinner. Prime-time. An Israeli series: “The Pilots’ Wives” (“Meet the Women behind Our Heroes”, said the promo), interrupted occasionally by a commercial depicting a soldier missing his mother’s soup (“disclaimer: the actor is not a soldier”). After the series, a short public service broadcast showing a group of young men, each in turn boasting his military service, until they notice one of them – a violent zoom-in – keeps quiet; the message is clear. Then the news, with at least one public relations item pushed by the military: “teen-age girls eager to become fighters”, “a remote-control watch-and-shoot system on the Gaza fence”, “a unique glimpse into a top-secret air-force base” or the like. Not to mention the real news, be it about the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iran, or even the billions of terrorists disguised as miserable African refugees allegedly waiting on the Egyptian border to inundate Israel: all these issues, and many more, are predominantly managed and framed by the military.
The military service has been made a major issue in Israeli public discourse. Not that the army is short of soldiers: on the contrary, the number of recruits requesting “to serve their country” in combat units is at record level. Nevertheless, uniting the nation around the military as the ultimate good is a goal in itself, especially when it implicitly excludes the Israeli-Palestinians, who are not conscripted. Thus the stage and screen actor Itay Tiran was removed from Israel’s official propaganda website when someone noticed he had not served; And, following the Zeitgeist, “national left-wing” playwright Shmuel Hasfari said he would refuse to work with Tiran “just like with any murderer or rapist.”
Most Israeli artists are careful not to express themselves critically about Israel’s policies, definitely not to say a word against the country’s deep militarism and racism; Scander Kobti, co-director of Ajami, nominated for an Academy Award in Best Foreign Language Film, caused a scandal just for saying he didn’t “represent Israel” in Hollywood (“I cannot represent a state that doesn’t represent me”, the Israeli-Palestinian claimed) – even that is more than the selectively sensitive Israeli ear can bear. Every Israeli is expected to be an ambassador abroad – no wonder that in a highly popular Israeli reality show just a few years ago, candidates competed on who would best represent Israeli propaganda abroad (a former Israeli army spokesman was among the judges). Remember it next time you talk to an Israeli: especially outside Israel, you might hear not the truth, but the official state propaganda. Though many Israelis sincerely believe the two are identical.
The deep racism of the Israeli psyche is on the rise. The 1990s, at least in hindsight, marked some liberalization of the public discourse; the first decade of this century crushed it, and now the mildly critical, left-liberal discourse hardly exists in the mainstream. No wonder the liberal left has just 3 seats out of 120 in the Knesset; all the other parties are various shades of right-wing, far right, or fascism (except the small outcast “Arab” parties). The racist mindset can be observed in the most trivial daily situations, like my elderly neighbor, when told I saw someone peeping at my window the other night, instinctively reacting with a single question: “Have you seen whether it was a Jew or an Arab?”
Ever more often, when I mention the Netherlands, I am told that all the Dutch were anti-Semitic and collaborated with the Nazis; my already ritualized reaction – that my grandparents and my mother owe their lives to Dutch Christians who risked their own lives to save them – is met with a shrug, expressing something like “don’t challenge my precious prejudice” or “don’t be so naïve, we all know everybody hates us.” And this is not just the case of Holland: from Sweden to Ethiopia, from Turkey to Argentina, no matter how Jewish-friendly (and Israel-friendly) a nation has been historically, Israelis are encouraged to view all non-Jews (“Goyim” is the pejorative term used uncritically by most Hebrew speakers) as inherently anti-Semitic and therefore anti-Israeli. Every criticism of Israel’s policy is automatically dismissed as yet another incarnation of an endemic, incurable hatred of Jews. Just like anti-communism was the national religion of the USA during the Cold War, the fanatic belief in an eternal world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy is the true national cult of Israel. The voices portraying even President Obama as anti-Semitic are just one undertone in an ear-deafening choir of incitement against every dissenting voice, within or without.
The younger generation knows little else. How could it? As the Jerusalem Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan shows, Israeli schoolbooks – their text, maps, and pictures – are inherently racist, especially against Arabs; but whereas the racism was sophisticatedly disguised in the 1990s schoolbooks, in the last decade it’s overt and explicit. Arabs are consistently represented as primitive, threatening, and untrustworthy; the Palestinian narrative is either distorted and denied, or simply ignored. The Occupation, says Peled-Elhanan, is never mentioned, the Green Line does not exist; many Israelis no longer know what it means, let alone where it is.
Even the language retreats: if the term “occupied territories” sounded rather neutral just a few years ago, when even Ariel Sharon used the term “occupation”, now the sickening euphemism “liberated territories” has made a comeback. At the same time, hypocrisy and double-standards are cultivated: right-wing parties outside Israel are regularly termed “extremist”, “xenophobic” or “racist”, terms never applied to much more extreme Israeli parties. Official Israel is shocked and outraged by naming a street in Ramallah after a Palestinian terrorist Ayyash (assassinated by Israel in 1996); At the same time, the Israeli far-right leader Ze’evi (assassinated by Palestinians in 2001), whose main political platform was ethnic cleansing (“transfer”) of all Palestinians, has several streets, three promenades, two settlements, a highway, a bridge, and an army base named after him, and a law to commemorate him and even educate future generations with his “legacy.”
Is It Too Late?
This is the present atmosphere in Israel – one of a rising, violent nationalist self-righteousness, especially among the younger generation. A recent poll shows that while 35% of Israelis over the age of 30 said they would vote for right-wing parties, this number almost doubled for youths up to the age of 29, and stood at 61%.
Does this mean there is no chance for peace? A difficult question. Despite all of the above, polls also show 60% support among the general public for removing the majority of settlements. As always, this 60% majority of Israeli Jews overwhelmingly believes it is a minority – only a third of respondents said such an evacuation had the support of the Israeli majority. This last figure – the majority being persuaded it is actually a minority – is one of the greatest achievements of the official Israeli brain-wash, and has been consistent for many years.
One can therefore understand Zeev Sternhell’s call on Obama’s Washington to implement an imposed solution: “Were Israeli society prepared to pay the price for peace, its government would not be fanning the flames of conflict […] The conclusion is that […] the only solution is an imposed one”, writes the prominent Israeli political scientist. This is no rosy scenario either, needless to say. In clear imitation of Nazi calls to try the German politicians who signed the “humiliating” Treaty of Versailles (1919), the Israeli right-wing has already demanded to “put Oslo criminals on trial” for signing the Oslo Accords. One can recall European history and imagine how Israeli fascists would react to an “imposed peace.” Luckily, they are just a minority; but given the current atmosphere in Israel, as well as the demographic advantage of the right-wing (Orthodox Jews have much more children), it might not remain a minority for long. Time, if there still is any, is running out.
EDITOR: Another success for the BDS camp!
Gil Scott-Heron has at last joined those who boycott Israel, and refuses to go and sing there. He joins tens of committed artists, who, unlike Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen, have chosen to takea moral, political stand on Israel and its barbaric occupation of Palestine.
Gil Scott-Heron boycotts Tel Aviv, sends powerful message to Israelis: The Only Democracy?
April 30th, 2010, by Jesse Bacon
By Noam Sheizaf
This is a translation of my article regarding the cancellation of spoken words artist Gil-Scott Heron’s gig in Tel Aviv. His show was scheduled for late May, but it was later removed from Scot-Heron’s site and though there was no official statement yet, it seems to have been canceled for political reasons.
The original Hebrew version of the article was posted Wednesday on the web magazine The Other.
A small commotion erupted this week among the public that appreciates black music in Israel upon learning that ground-breaking artist, poet and musician, Gil Scott-Heron apparently canceled his Tel Aviv show for political reasons. There was no official statement; However, following protests of some of his pro-Palestinian fans during a show in London on the weekend, Scott-Heron announced from the stage that he would not be coming to Israel. The show, planed for May 25, was removed from the line up on his site.
Scott-Heron is a political man. He came out against US presidents, preached against nuclear energy, and asked the new generation of Hip-Hop artists to write meaningful lyrics rather than merely attach words to music. His most famous piece, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” is considered the anthem of alternative culture. I assume these and similar reasons made Scott-Heron appeal to a couple of hundred Israelis. The only surprise is their ability to make a U-turn the moment that protest was directed at us.
In the last few days, Israelis who awaited the show in Tel Aviv filled Scott Heron’s website and Facebook pages dedicated to the issue with angry comments. The arguments were of the type common to such occurrences: one shouldn’t mix music and politics (”music brings people together; politics pulls them apart”); one must distinguish between the government of Israel and the citizens; it is hypocrisy and double standards to boycott Israel when there are so many more horrible governments and deadlier regimes in the world.
But beyond the usual arguments, an offended tone sneaked in: “Why should we, music lovers, who love GSH also because of the place we live in, should be blamed for the occupation or apartheid?” writes one Israeli on Facebook, and added elsewhere, “to cancel the show, it is to spit in the face of the leftists in the crowd.”
“In Israel there is a true music scene,” comments another Israeli on Scott Heron’s site. “For me, music represents peace and love, not war and hate. If you come to Israel you will see it with your own eyes”. Avi Pitshon wrote in Haaretz in relation to a similar incident, in which a few Israelis joined a call to the Pixies and Metallica to skip playing in Israel, “the radical left cannot hurt the powerful, those who shape policy, and is therefore trying to hit whoever is under the spotlight: music loving citizens.”
It seems that what hurts Pitshon and the other Israelis most is not the anti-Israeli stance of Scott Heron and others like him, but the choice to specifically boycott them, the public who is for peace, loves Soul and Hip-Hop, and sees itself more in touch with Detroit and Chicago than the Tomb of Rachel and Elkana. After all, the voice of these embittered music lovers didn’t rise when a pretty effective boycott was organized in the EU against produce from the settlements: the settlers are the bad guys in this story. But to boycott us, us who took part in three Peace Now demonstrations and two events commemorating Rabin? What is the world coming to?
The Israeli left (and yours truly included) is deeply longing to be part of some global communion. People here imagine themselves through American culture, Italian cuisine and French novels, as if we were born to a bourgeois family on Paris’ Left Bank and our life project is to confront the feelings of alienation inherent in human existence. Tel Aviv and its suburbs are arranged with their face towards the West and a wall separating their back from all the turmoil in the East: the settlers in the territories, the Ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem, and also these Palestinians. The occupation is such a boring and tedious story, the making of a stupid government and wicked right-wingers. Clearly, we are not part of this madness.
A worldview so detached leads to many disappointments. So we are shocked to discover that the Palestinians hate us just as much as the hate the right-wingers, we are insulted when the reception clerk in a Spanish hotel lets a curse out behind our back, and cannot understand why an old rapper, who has seen a few things in his life, would tell us that, on second thought, Tel Aviv doesn’t suit him right now. What the hell? We blow a fuse. What’s the connection between the Barbie Club [a Tel Aviv nightclub] and the territories? After all, they are at least a 20 minutes car ride away!
To the credit of the Israeli Right one should say that it is much more consistent and well argued. From the Right’s perspective, these conflicts with the world are the price for our clinging to parts of our historical homeland and our survival in a hostile region. The Right doesn’t try to evade taking responsibility for sitting on top of Palestinians, and if someone, whether Obama or Scott Heron, doesn’t like it, there is no choice but to bite the bullet.
In contrast, “the enlightened camp” is busy with the endless theatrical performance of their moral difficulties, whose real purpose is to create a barrier between them and all those action for which they refuse to take responsibility. Thus, when the order arrives, the leftist climbs into the tank without a second thought, but later he will do an anguished film about it for the Cannes festival. Thus the obsessive persecution of settlers. Thus Tel Aviv behaves as if it were a Mediterranean suburb of London while in a spitting distance from it eastward and southward lies an immense jail holding millions of people without rights for over half a century.
The self-pity tops itself with the absurd claim that such cancellations will benefit the occupation, because they would discourage those most in favor of two states solution. As if the role the world is to caress Tel Aviv’s residents’ back until they draw the courage and convince the right, to please stop building villas on the hills of Samaria and abstain from kicking Palestinians out of their houses in East Jerusalem. Beyond the fact that this method has been completely discredited by history–the Israeli Left doesn’t even convince itself anymore–the theory doesn’t hold water: excited or depressed, these thousands of peace and love and music lovers do not show up in Bil’in or Sheikh Jarrah, whereas the few dozens of human rights activists who do go there are begging the world for a little international pressure to save Israel from itself.
A few years ago, the dynamics surrounding Roger Waters (ex Pink Floyd) visit’s to Israel recalls somewhat the current case. Waters didn’t boycott, but he said a few words about peace and ending the occupation. Immediately, a few of the “enlightened camp” ordered him to focus on the guitar and stop lecturing us. There is something really bizarre with our ability to sing about another brick in the wall while forgetting about the miserable Farmers whose fields are behind our wall. (As it is hard to understand Israelis who return from Berlin with “an original stone from the wall” when the improved local version stands for free in our living room.) Considering the deep disconnect between the Israelis and the protest anthems that they are humming, it seems that Scott-Heron did us a favor by reminding us that in a place where pregnant women give birth at checkpoints and people are locked in their houses, even music doesn’t cross borders.
A surgical strike on Israel’s wallet could end the occupation: Haaretz
By Matthew A. Taylor
What on earth will it take to persuade Israel to leave the occupied territories? Sometimes it seems as if nothing will work. For eight years now, the Arab Peace Initiative, which early Zionist leaders would have seen as a dream-come-true, has been collecting dust. Its terms include two states based on the pre-1967 borders, a mutually agreed-upon solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis, and normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the entire Arab world. What once would have appeared to many to be Israel’s salvation now seems impossible given Israel’s entrenched colonial position in the West Bank and the settlers’ political power.
Perhaps American college students can help bring Israel to its senses. This past March 18, members of the student senate at the University of California, Berkeley, voted to recommend to the university’s governing board of regents that they divest their holdings in General Electric and United Technologies – two companies that have profited from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, its demolition of Palestinian homes, its aggressive campaign in Gaza last year, and the expansion of settlements. Although Berkeley’s student government is not the first in the United States to vote for a divestment recommendation of this nature, it is by far the most significant.
To be clear, the student bill does not call for a comprehensive form of divestment, and only targets companies involved in Israel’s occupation and military misadventures.
Some see the divestment proposal as counter-productive. “From the standpoint of advancing the causes of peace and justice for Palestinians, the Berkeley bill is worse than useless,” claimed Haaretz’s Bradley Burston in a recent column. Burston dismissed the idea of selling “some pension fund shares in American companies which make military aircraft engines” because those companies will “continue to sell them to Israel, regardless of the vote.”
But if history is any guide, Berkeley’s divestment measure could have a positive impact. In the 1980s, Berkeley’s student government was one of the first at any U.S. institution of higher learning to vote to recommend divestment from South Africa’s apartheid regime. The UC system’s board of regents initially resisted the divestment call, but student protests eventually led the regents to divest funds from companies with ties to South Africa. Eventually other campuses and local municipalities took similar actions.
The United States government, formerly one of the chief enablers of apartheid, followed the lead of the students, passing the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986. The legislation prohibited all new U.S. trade and investment in South Africa, and stated five preconditions for lifting the sanctions, including a timeline for ending apartheid laws and the release of Nelson Mandela.
“In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of nonviolent means, such as boycotts and divestments, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime. Students played a leading role in that struggle,” Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in a letter to Berkeley’s student government endorsing the current divestment bill.
Whether one sees Israel as an apartheid-like regime or not, certainly the aforementioned history could offer lessons in how to end the occupation. If more American college campuses and local agencies pass divestment measures, eventually members of U.S. Congress may come to see that they must listen to their pro-justice, pro-peace constituents and not only to AIPAC. If that happens, a U.S. anti-occupation act could become a possibility.
If the U.S. government were to seriously pressure Israel – for example, by conditioning $3 billion in annual aid on an end to the occupation and implementation of an equitable peace agreement – perhaps that would provide the incentive necessary to end the occupation.
Although the Berkeley student president subsequently vetoed the divestment bill, and AIPAC’s lobbying of student senators successfully prevented an override vote by the narrowest of margins, the proposal’s eventual passage seems inevitable. That will turn the spotlight onto the university regents, who will face protests if they don’t follow the divestment recommendation.
We who promoted and rallied for this bill are a remarkably diverse coalition of Jews, Christians and Muslims; Israelis and Palestinians; and Americans of all backgrounds. Prominent Jewish supporters included Ofra Ben Artzi, sister-in-law of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Hedy Epstein, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor.
We Jews who support the divestment bill are fed up with Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights. We are unwilling to wait for political pressure to get Israel out of the territories to spring from the head of Zeus. And we believe that this move is in the best interests of the Israeli and Palestinian people.
The consequences to Israel of not ending the occupation could not be clearer. “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote [in Israeli elections], that will be an apartheid state,” said none other than Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in his address to the Herzliya National Security Conference this past winter.
Israel must choose: End the occupation or face the unraveling of the militarily enforced Jewish-majority state. The selective divestment approach that Berkeley students advocate will help build the political pressure to force Israel to make this choice.
Matthew A. Taylor (http://matthewtaylor.net) is a UC Berkeley Peace and Conflict Studies student, co-founder of PeacePower magazine, and author of “The Road to Nonviolent Coexistence in Palestine/Israel,” a chapter in the book “Nonviolent Coexistence.”
Yitzhar extremists: All settlers must fight construction freeze: Haaretz
Far-rightists from the West Bank settlement of Yizthar issued a letter responding to the recent clashes between settlers and Israel Defense Forces troops, stating that the fight against government restrictions and the West Bank construction freeze relates to all West Bank settlers, Haaretz learned on Friday.
“This is not just Yitzhar’s battle but every settler’s fight,” the letter sent to settlers in Har Bracha, Itamar and Elon Moreh stated, adding that “on such days, in which the restrictions on the settlements are multiplying, the battle against them is of great importance.”
“The recent clashes unfortunately escalated too far, and we are now conducting an internal investigation, so that if we have to deal with such events in the future, we will be able to do so in a more correct manner,” the letter added.
Israel Police raided Yitzhar early Thursday morning, arresting seven residents suspected of involvement in attacks on Palestinians. Four more residents were arrested soon after.
The raid followed several clashes over the past few weeks, which culminated on Independence Day, when three soldiers were lightly hurt by stones hurled by the settlers who were protesting IDF restrictions on entering several springs near the settlement.
According to the IDF, the soldiers asked the residents to evacuate the area because it was a closed military zone.
Yitzhar has been at the forefront of the settler movement’s campaign, which calls for violent retaliation for government restrictions on Jewish building in the West Bank. Residents have launched numerous attacks on Palestinians, including an arson attack on a mosque in December 2009.
John Mearsheimer: “The Future of Palestine – Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners”: IOA
29 April 2010
Edited Transcript of Remarks by Professor John J. Mearsheimer
It is a great honor to be here at the Palestine Center to give the Sharabi Memorial Lecture. I would like to thank Yousef Munayyer, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, for inviting me, and all of you for coming out to hear me speak this afternoon.
My topic is the future of Palestine, and by that I mean the future of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, or what was long ago called Mandatory Palestine. As you all know, that land is now broken into two parts: Israel proper or what is sometime called “Green Line” Israel and the Occupied Territories, which include the West Bank and Gaza. In essence, my talk is about the future relationship between Israel and the Occupied Territories.
Of course, I am not just talking about the fate of those lands; I am also talking about the future of the people who live there. I am talking about the future of the Jews and the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, as well as the Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories.
The story I will tell is straightforward. Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans – to include many American Jews – Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy. Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a “Greater Israel,” which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa. Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term. In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream.
Let me explain how I reached these conclusions.
Given present circumstances there are four possible futures for Palestine.
The outcome that gets the most attention these days is the two-state solution, which was described in broad outline by President Clinton in late December 2000. It would obviously involve creating a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel. To be viable, that Palestine state would have to control 95 percent or more of the West Bank and all of Gaza. There would also have to be territorial swaps to compensate the Palestinians for those small pieces of West Bank territory that Israel got to keep in the final agreement. East Jerusalem would be the capital of the new Palestinian state. The Clinton Parameters envisioned certain restrictions on the new state’s military capabilities, but it would control the water beneath it, the air space above it, and its own borders – to include the Jordan River Valley.
There are three possible alternatives to a two-state solution, all of which involve creating a Greater Israel – an Israel that effectively controls the West Bank and Gaza.
In the first scenario, Greater Israel would become a democratic bi-national state in which Palestinians and Jews enjoy equal political rights. This solution has been suggested by a handful of Jews and a growing number of Palestinians. However, it would mean abandoning the original Zionist vision of a Jewish state, since the Palestinians would eventually outnumber the Jews in Greater Israel.
Second, Israel could expel most of the Palestinians from Greater Israel, thereby preserving its Jewish character through an overt act of ethnic cleansing. This is what happened in 1948 when the Zionists drove roughly 700,000 Palestinians out of the territory that became the new state of Israel, and then prevented them from returning to their homes. Following the Six Day War in 1967, Israel expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights. The scale of the expulsion, however, would have to be even greater this time, because there are about 5.5 million Palestinians living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
The final alternative to a two-state solution is some form of apartheid, whereby Israel increases its control over the Occupied Territories, but allows the Palestinians to exercise limited autonomy in a set of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves.
It seems clear to me that the two-state solution is the best of these alternative futures. This is not to say that it is an ideal solution, because it is not; but it is by far the best outcome for both the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well as the United States. That is why the Obama administration is intensely committed to pushing it.
Nevertheless, the Palestinians are not going to get their own state anytime soon. They are instead going to end up living in an apartheid state dominated by Israeli Jews.
The main reason that a two-state solution is no longer a serious option is that most Israelis are opposed to making the sacrifices that would be necessary to create a viable Palestinian state, and there is little reason to expect them to have an epiphany on this issue. For starters, there are now about 480,000 settlers in the Occupied Territories and a huge infrastructure of connector and bypass roads, not to mention settlements. Much of that infrastructure and large numbers of those settlers would have to be removed to create a Palestinian state. Many of those settlers however, would fiercely resist any attempt to rollback the settlement enterprise. Earlier this month, Ha’aretz reported that a Hebrew University poll found that 21 percent of the settlers believe that “all means must be employed to resist the evacuation of most West Bank settlements, including the use of arms.” In addition, the study found that 54 percent of those 480,000 settlers “do not recognize the government’s authority to evacuate settlements”; and even if there was a referendum sanctioning a withdrawal, 36 percent of the settlers said they would not accept it.
Those settlers, however, do not have to worry about the present government trying to remove them. Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to expanding the settlements in East Jerusalem and indeed throughout the West Bank. Of course, he and virtually everyone in his cabinet are opposed to giving the Palestinians a viable state of their own. Larry Derfner, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, succinctly summed up Netanyahu’s thinking about these matters in a recent column: “For him to divide the land, to divide Jerusalem, to give up Hebron, to send 100,000 settlers packing – that would be treason in his eyes. That would be moral suicide. His heart isn’t in it; everything in him rebels at the idea. Our prime minister is constitutionally incapable of leading the nation out of the Palestinians’ midst, of fighting the settlers and the Right in a virtual or literal civil war, of persuading Israelis to admit that on the crucial endeavor of their national life for the past 43 years, they were wrong and the world was right.”
One might argue that there are prominent Israelis like former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who openly disagree with Netanyahu and advocate a two-state solution. While this is true, it is by no means clear that either of them would be willing or able to make the concessions that would be necessary to create a legitimate Palestinian state. Certainly Olmert did not do so when he was prime minister.
But even if they were, it is unlikely that either of those leaders, or anyone else for that matter, could get enough of their fellow citizens to back an effective two-state solution. The political center of gravity in Israel has shifted sharply to the right over the past decade and there is no sizable pro-peace political party or movement that they could turn to for help. Probably the best single indicator of how far to the right Israel has moved in recent years is the shocking fact that Avigdor Lieberman is employed as its foreign minister. Even Martin Peretz of the New Republic, who is well known for his unyielding support for Israel, describes Lieberman as “a neo-fascist,” and equates him with the late Austrian fascist Jorg Haider. And there are other individuals in Netanyahu’s cabinet who share many of Lieberman’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; they just happen to be less outspoken than the foreign minister.
To read the rest of this excellent presentation, please use the link:
John Mearsheimer: “The Future of Palestine – Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners”
Report: U.S. in talks to declare Mideast nuclear-free zone: Haaretz
The United States and Egypt are negotiating a proposal that would make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, saying the effort was a meant to prevent Iran from disrupting an upcoming UN conference on nuclear nonproliferation.
U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that the move could be a significant step toward showing that Washington, who is often criticized of overlooking Israel’s reported nuclear arsenal, could be even handed in its attempt to ensure the Middle East is free of nuclear weapons.
“We’ve made a proposal to them [Egypt] that goes beyond what the U.S. has been willing to do before,” senior U.S. officials told the WSJ, adding that they didn’t believe that would happen without first achieving major advances in Arab-Israeli peace talks.
An Israeli official told the WSJ that Israel was in favor a Middle East freeze of WMD and nuclear weapons, but that “it should be the culmination of a process that begins with bilateral and individual peace agreements between all the countries in the region.”
Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security told the WSJ that Washington was “concerned that the conditions are not right unless all members of the region participate, which would be unlikely unless there is a comprehensive peace plan which is accepted,”
Tauscher added that Washington had already discussed the possibility of creating such a nuclear-free zone with the Arab League and other members of the Nonaligned Movement.
Egypt and other Arab states have been demanding that any final declaration that might come out of the month-long UN nuclear nonproliferation conference planned to open on Monday would include the call for the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.
Israel is widely believed to have a sizable nuclear arsenal although it has not acknowledged it.
Egypt is also demanding the convening of an international conference next year with Israel’s participation to discuss that issue. Diplomats have said the United States and Russia are trying to find a way to satisfy Egypt’s demands.
Many NPT signatories would also like the review conference to call for universality of the treaty – meaning that Israel, Pakistan and India should be pressured to sign and get rid of any warheads they have. North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003 and tested nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009.
Senior Obama administration officials told the WSJ Saturday that Washington would support a conference such as the one demanded by Egypt at a future date, saying that talks with Egypt on the subject would resume on the sidelines of this month’s UN conference in New York.
US gives Abbas private assurances over Israeli settlements: The Guardian
Exclusive: Americans consider withholding veto protecting Israel at UN if building goes ahead at Ramat Shlomo
The US has given private assurances to encourage the Palestinians to join indirect Middle East peace talks, including an offer to consider allowing UN security council condemnation of any significant new Israeli settlement activity, the Guardian has learned.
The assurances were given verbally in a meeting a week ago between a senior US diplomat and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Since then – and after months of US diplomacy – it appears Israeli and Palestinian leaders are close to starting indirect “proximity” talks, which would be the first resumption of the Middle East peace process since Israel’s war in Gaza began in late 2008.
There was no official confirmation of the details of the meeting and Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, denied assurances were given. “It’s not true,” he said. “We are still talking to the Americans.”
But a Palestinian source, who was given a detailed account of the meeting, said David Hale, the deputy of the US special envoy, George Mitchell, told Abbas that Barack Obama wanted to see the peace process move forward with the starting of indirect talks. The diplomat said Washington understood there were obstacles and described Israeli settlement construction as “provocative”.
He told Abbas the Americans had received assurances from the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that one particular settlement project in East Jerusalem, at Ramat Shlomo, would not go ahead, at least for now. The site is important because last month an agreement on indirect talks collapsed within a day of being announced, after Israeli officials gave planning approval for 1,600 new homes in the settlement. The US vice‑president, Joe Biden, who was in Jerusalem at the time, condemned the Israeli announcement in unusually strong language.
Hale then told Abbas that if there was significantly provocative settlement activity, including in East Jerusalem, Washington may consider allowing the UN security council to censure Israel. It was understood that meant the US would abstain from voting on a resolution rather than use its veto.
Any US decision not to veto a resolution critical of Israel would be very unusual and a rare sign of American anger towards its long-time ally. However, it was not clear what may constitute significantly provocative activity. Palestinian officials asked in the meeting, but were not given an explicit definition, the source said.
In a New York Times opinion piece this week it was suggested that a letter was given to Abbas offering an unprecedented US commitment to the Palestinians and saying Washington would not stand in the way of a UN resolution condemning Israeli actions. But the Palestinian source told the Guardian that the assurances were only verbal and were not in letter form because the US wanted the details kept secret.
Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, suggested they were close to agreeing to indirect talks. “We want to give President Obama a chance, to give Senator Mitchell a chance and of course success to us means independence and freedom,” he said.
Last year, the Palestinians were refusing to enter talks without a full freeze on settlement building. Israel has put a partial, 10-month curb on construction in the West Bank, but Netanyahu has refused in public to freeze building in East Jerusalem. Last week he said Palestinian calls for a halt to settlement building in the city were an “unacceptable demand”.
Yet reports suggest a tacit, temporary delay has been put on planning approvals for settlement projects in the city. Israeli ministers have said they believe the indirect talks could start within weeks and, privately, Israeli officials say there has been transparency with both sides about understandings reached to allow the process to begin.
Asked about Israeli settlement building, Erekat said: “I don’t care about words. I care about deeds. I really want to see that nothing takes place on the ground. That is what matters to me.”
Hani al-Masri, a political adviser to Abbas, said: “The Americans said they will blame the party that puts obstacles in the way of the peace process.”
But he added that it was very unlikely that the Americans would allow the UN to censure Israel.
“We are very far from that step. They will never leave Israel to the mercy of the security council,” said Masri.
US and Israel at the UN
For decades the US has vetoed UN security council resolutions that are critical of its ally Israel. However, occasionally the US either abstains from voting or votes in favour of sometimes strongly worded resolutions. This last happened in October 2000 when the US abstained in a vote over a resolution about the outbreak of the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising, which strongly criticised Israeli “provocation”. The last time this happened regularly was between 1990 and 1992, when George Bush Sr was US president and when relations with Israel were particularly bad. His administration voted in favour of six resolutions critical of Israel
Iran: We’ll ‘cut off Israel’s feet’ if it attacks Syria: Haaretz
Iranian Vice President Mohammad Rida Rahimi warned on Friday that Iran would “cut off Israel’s feet” if it attacked Syria, French news agency AFP reported.
“We will stand alongside Syria against any [Israeli] threat,” Rahimi told reporters during a news conference with Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otri in Damascus, adding that “If those who have violated Palestinian land want to try anything we will cut off their feet.”
According to AFP, the Iranian vice president said that “[Syria is a] strong country that is ready to confront any threat,” adding that Tehran “will back Syria with all its means and strength.”
On Thursday, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referred to the recent torrent of allegations that Syria had transferred Scud missiles to the Hezbollah in Lebanon, and said that the Syrian President Bashar Assad was pursuing dangerous policies that could unleash war on the Middle East.
“We have spoken out forcefully about the grave dangers of Syria’s transfer of weapons to Hizbollah,” Clinton said. “We condemn this in the strongest possible terms and have expressed our concerns directly to the Syrian government.”
She added: “Transferring weapons to these terrorists – especially longer-range missiles – would pose a serious threat to the security of Israel.
It would have a profoundly destabilizing effect on the region.
“All states must stop supplying weapons to terrorist groups such as Hizbollah and Hamas. Every rocket smuggled into southern Lebanon or Gaza sets back the cause of peace.”
Clinton’s reference to long-range weapons follows reports that Syria supplied Hezbollah with advanced Scud missiles capable of inflicting sever damage on Israel’s major cities – a charge Damascus denies.
She said: “President Assad is making decisions that could mean war or peace for the region.”
Clinton went on to defend America’s recent decision to return an ambassador to Syria after a five-year absence.
“We know [Assad is] hearing from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, she said. “It is crucial that he also hear directly from us, so that the potential consequences of his actions are clear. That’s why we are sending an ambassador back to Syria.
“There should be no mistake, either in Damascus or anywhere else: The United States is not reengaging with Syria as a reward or a concession. Engagement is a tool that can give us added leverage and insight, and a greater ability to convey strong and clear messages aimed at changing Syria’s behavior.”
Israeli-Palestinian talks to start next week – Clinton: BBC
Hillary Clinton: “Ultimately we want to see parties in direct negotiations”
Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks are set to start next week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says.
Mrs Clinton told reporters in Washington that US special envoy George Mitchell would be returning to the region next week.
Plans to launch the indirect negotiations failed last month over a row about Israeli plans to build 1,600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been stalled since 2008.
“We will be starting with proximity talks next week,” Mrs Clinton said.
“Ultimately we want to see parties in direct negotiations and working out all the difficult issues that they must.”
Washington expected that Arab foreign ministers meeting on Saturday would endorse the new talks, she added.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: “We are making every possible effort to begin these talks. But the official decision will be made by the Arab foreign ministers and the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organisation] executive committee.”
Israeli officials have not publicly commented on Mrs Clinton’s remarks.
‘Guarantees’
The US has been struggling to get the proximity talks under way.
These were knocked off course by an announcement in March that Israel had approved plans for the new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo during a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
The Palestinians – who want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state – then pulled out of the scheduled indirect talks last month in protest.
Mr Mitchell’s team has been actively trying to extract guarantees from the Israelis to bring the Palestinians back to the proposed talks.
Earlier this week, the US envoy said he had held “positive and productive” talks with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
A report in the Wall Street Journal last week quoted unnamed US officials as saying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had offered measures including easing the blockade on Gaza, releasing prisoners, freezing the controversial 1,600 homes for two years, and agreeing to discuss borders and the status of Jerusalem.
The Palestinians were still seeking clarification, but hoped to be in a position to seek the Arab League’s backing to re-enter talks at the meeting scheduled for 1 May.
“We were always in favour of the talks, and we still want them to go ahead,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said earlier this week.
However, it is unclear what promises the US has made to the Palestinians to guarantee there will be no further unilateral Israeli actions that undermine the process, the BBC’s State Department correspondent Kim Ghattas says.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Clinton: Indirect peace talks to begin next week: Haaretz
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday she expected Israel and the Palestinians to begin indirect peace talks next week, breaking months of deadlock over a key U.S. foreign policy goal.
“We will be starting with proximity talks next week,” Clinton told reporters, saying U.S. special Envoy George Mitchell would return to the Middle East next week to get the process under way.
Clinton said the United States expected an Arab foreign ministers meeting on Saturday to endorse the new talks, which would give Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas political cover to resume indirect negotiations that he pulled out of in March after Israel announced new settlement construction.
“Ultimately we want to see the parties in direct negotiations and working out all the difficult issues,” Clinton said during a meeting with visiting Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Sabah.
“They’ve been close a few times before,” Clinton said. “So we are looking to see the resumption of those discussions.”
Israeli and Palestinian officials declined comment. One Abbas aide, Saeb Erekat, said his side would await the results of the Arab foreign ministers meeting on Saturday as well as of a Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee next week.
Kuwait’s Sabah said he was confident Arab states would back the initiative to get talks back on track. “We support fully the position that the United States has taken,” he said.
Clinton’s statement signaled that weeks of intense U.S. diplomacy were bearing fruit and both sides were again ready to relaunch the Mideast peace process through indirect “proximity” talks – in which U.S.mediators shuttle between negotiators.
“We’ve worked intensively in this. We’ve asked both sides to take actions,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.
“I think there’s an understanding that the proximity talks are valuable. I think there’s a commitment to engage seriously in them and to begin to address the substantive issues at the heart of the search for peace,” he said.
Mitchell, who held three days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders last week, was expected to travel again in coming days and would have meetings in the region toward the end of next week, Crowley said.
The Obama administration has been pushing hard for the two sides to resume negotiations stalled since the three-week Gaza war that began in December 2008, calling it a direct security concern to the United States.
Hopes that indirect talks would start in March were dashed when Israeli officials announced plans to build 1,600 new homes for Israeli settlers, ignoring U.S. and Palestinian objections.
Abbas had long insisted Israel freeze settlement building before the talks resume, and had rejected a temporary hiatus in construction ordered by Netanyahu last year as insufficient.
But Palestinian sources have said that Mitchell offered them an unwritten commitment to assign blame publicly to any party that takes actions which compromise the negotiations in exchange for coming back to the table.
An Arab League committee due to meet Saturday in Cairo is expected to once again support the indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks – a month after its last endorsement. That previous nod was rescinded over an Israeli plan to build housing in contested East Jerusalem.
Abbas needs Arab backing to ward off internal Palestinian criticism over entering into talks with a hardline Israeli government, without having first had his preconditions met, notably a full freeze of Israeli construction in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Clinton declined to discuss any specific U.S. offers to the Palestinians, but said that both sides recognized the importance the Obama administration placed on reaching a peace deal which eventually delivers independent states for both Israel and the Palestinians.
“We’ve been very clear in our efforts that the resumption of talks is absolutely essential for the progress we seek toward a two state solution,” she said.
U.S.: We will continue to defend Israel in the UN: Haaretz
The United States will continue supporting Israel in the United Nations, the White House was quoted as saying by Army Radio on Saturday, denying reports that Washington offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to allow the UN Security Council to censure Israel over its West Bank policy so to encourage the Palestinians to participate in peace talks.
The remarks made Friday by White House spokesman Tommy Vietor referred to recent reports, according to which U.S. special Mideast envoy George Mitchell’s deputy, David Hale, told Abbas that the U.S. views Israeli construction in East Jerusalem as “provocative,” reportedly promising Abbas the U.S. would consider allowing a UNSC condemnation should such activity continue at a significant level.
This assurance would mean a U.S. abstention on any resolution, rather than a veto, the British daily The Guardian reported.
“This report is inaccurate,” Vietor was quoted as saying in Ben Smith’s Politico blog, adding that U.S. “policy about issues relating to Israel at the U.N. is clear and will not change.”
“We will continue to speak out strongly for Israel?s right to self-defense and to oppose efforts to single Israel out unfairly for criticism,” Vietor said.
Vietor did not however, according to Smth’s blog, flat out deny the existence of a letter to Abbas saying, “We?ve asked both sides to take steps to rebuild trust and proceed with proximity talks. We?re not going to get into the details of those requests because we think they should be discussed in private diplomatic channels.”
On Friday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also denied the report. It’s not true,” Erekat said. “We are still talking to the Americans.”
Meanwhile, senior Israeli officials told Haaretz on Thursday that Obama told several European leaders that if Israeli-Palestinian talks remain stalemated into September or October, he will convene an international summit on achieving Mideast peace.
The officials said the conference would be run by the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers – the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia – in a bid to forge a united global front for creating a Palestinian state. The summit, they said, would address such core issues as borders, security arrangements, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.
The London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported on Friday that Syria is opposed to the Palestinians returning to the negotiating table, because “Israel has not made enough gestures of good faith, and in light of the fact that senior officials in Israel have been sounding threats against Damascus and Beirut
Pro-Israel group monitoring, intimidating Columbia faculty
Jared Malsin, The Electronic Intifada, 30 April 2010
Critics of Israeli policy and sympathizers with Palestinians have been subjected to intimidation at Columbia University. (Angela Radulescu)
In the summer of 2000, preeminent scholar Edward Said sparked what became conventionally known as a “controversy” when he was photographed hurling a small stone into the no-man’s land between Lebanon and Israel.
What Said, one of the 20th century’s most important literary theorists, considered a trivial gesture of jubilation following the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon was, for pro-Israeli groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an act of violence and evidence of political extremism. In February 2001 Said was disinvited from a conference on Freud he was to have spoken at in Vienna.
The stone-throwing fracas created by the ADL and other groups was the first salvo in a series of Mideast-related convulsions at American universities, and particularly at Columbia, where Said had attainted the vaunted rank of University Professor.
The latest iteration of this saga concerns one of Said’s students, Professor Joseph Massad, who is labeled “controversial,” perhaps as frequently as any contemporary American scholar.
Specifically, a student group at Columbia called Campus Media Watch (CMW), backed by the pro-Israeli media monitor the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), recently violated university regulations while urging students to “report” on allegedly biased utterances by Massad and other professors, according to faculty members and students.
According to documents, news reports and interviews with students and professors familiar with the incidents, documents and news reports, Columbia senior Daniel Hertz falsely claimed this semester to be a registered student in the class “Palestinian and Israeli politics and societies.” Hertz criticized the content of the class on CMW’s website, and urged other students to report on any perceived bias in Massad’s teaching.
Hertz’ father, Eli E. Hertz, is a prominent pro-Israeli businessman and activist, who among other roles, serves as the chairman of CAMERA’s board and sits on the Executive Council of the powerful Washington-based pro-Israel lobby group the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
If the university administration does not take a firm stand in the case, professors and students argue, the incident could hamper freedom of expression in the classroom. The apparent attempt to eavesdrop on Massad’s classroom also coincides with a resolution denouncing the professor introduced in the New York City Council (Res 0050-2010, 3 March 2010).
For Columbia faculty members, the case also raises the specter of a six-year-old dispute concerning Massad, who was granted tenure last year after top Columbia officials rejected claims that he intimidated students in lectures. Massad was branded as an extremist in a film, Columbia Unbecoming, which was produced by another pro-Israeli pressure group, The David Project.
“Extremely upbeat and congenial”
The incident began in January when Hertz began attending Massad’s class without registering, and wrote an anonymous blog post on CMW’s website, under a section titled “class watch” (“CMW Class Watch: Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies,” 21 January 2010).
Hertz founded CMW in the fall of 2009 after completing a summer internship with CAMERA. Hertz also identifies himself as a CAMERA campus fellow.
“Professor Massad initially caught me off guard,” Hertz wrote in his report on the class. “Extremely upbeat and congenial, it did not seem as though he could be someone guilty of delegitimizing the State of Israel, which is a common claim against Professor Massad’s work.”
He goes on to note that the syllabus for the class includes not only the works of Edward Said (The Question of Palestine), Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi (Palestinian identity) and Massad’s own book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question, but also the writings of the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and those of Israeli Jewish critic Shlomo Sand (The Invention of the Jewish People).
“A majority of the listed authors are among Israel’s greatest detractors,” Hertz wrote. “And while many are in fact Israeli, some of them, especially Shlomo Sand, have written pieces that many have considered virulently anti-Semitic.”
Hertz’ article ends by urging other students to report on this and other classes: “If you are taking this class or any other Middle Eastern related classes and would like to tell us about your experiences, please let us know by emailing us.”
Massad told The Electronic Intifada that he noticed the blog post, and immediately notified Sudipta Kaviraj, the chair of his department (Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures — MEALAC).
“We wanted to be a lot more alert this time, given what had happened,” Massad said, referring to the 2003-2004 dispute that followed the publication of the film.
Kaviraj forwarded this initial complaint to Columbia’s Vice President Nicholas Dirks and Provost Claude Steele, Massad said.
“In the meantime people are asking me — people who had seen the blog — ‘do you know who it is in your class?’ and I said, ‘no and I don’t want to know,’ because I don’t want to be unconsciously biased against this student if he’s a registered student in my class,” Massad said.
Although he was blogging anonymously, Hertz then gave an interview to the Columbia Spectator, the daily student newspaper, in which he claimed he was taking Massad’s class. The Spectator revealed that “Hertz blogs about what he says are inaccuracies in [Massad’s] lectures” (“Media Watch to promote dialogue, members say,” 10 February 2010).
After reading this in the Specator, Massad said, “I look up on the roster, and I see he’s not registered in my class.”
Massad said he checked with his two teaching assistants, who confirmed that Hertz was not registered for the class, and was not attending a discussion section. It was then that he decided to check university regulations to make sure he was within faculty rights to ask Hertz to leave the class, he said.
At the same time, the professor said, “my former chair and current chair contacted several student deans and the provost’s office, informing them of these developments and that professor Massad is planning to ask an unregistered student to leave the class, and they said he would be fully in his right, in fact this man has no right to be in this class.”
Massad also said Hertz repeatedly disobeyed instructions for all students to register for the course.
“From the start of the semester, for the first four or five classes, I asked, is anyone still unregistered? He never raised his hand,” Massad said.
“We also had to coordinate registering students for two discussion sections. I asked, is anyone still not registered for the discussion sections; no one raised his or her hand. I announced that I did not allow auditors in the class, either registered or unregistered auditors. I said this several times but to no avail.”
The day after the Spectator article appeared, Massad pointed to Hertz at the beginning of his lecture and asked what his name was and whether he was registered for the class. According to Massad, his teaching assistant, and students in the class, it was 11 February, well after the 29 January deadline to register for classes.
Massad recalled Hertz sitting in the front of the classroom with his laptop open and his iPhone on, “possibly recording my voice,” and once the students had “settled down,” asking him if he had registered for the class.
When Hertz then said that he only wanted to audit the class, Massad recalled answering, “Even if you wanted to audit the class you would have had to get my permission, and nonetheless you would have had to register as an auditor, and I would not have allowed that.” He then said he informed Hertz that he was in violation of university regulations, at which point Hertz, recalled Massad, asked “Do you want me to leave?” Massad answered, “Yes, please.”
Massad said he again informed the department’s chair “for procedural purposes” and also wrote to Columbia’s provost, Claude Steele, and other officials, and opened an official grievance procedure with the university.
Kaviraj and former MEALAC chairman Sheldon Pollock also met with Steele, supporting Massad’s claims, he said. Massad also said he met with Jeri Henry, the senior assistant dean of judicial affairs, as a part of the grievance procedure.
Kaviraj, Henry, Vice President Nicholas Dirks and other Columbia administration officials declined repeated requests for comment on the matter.
“A spy”
In April, with the grievance procedure coming to a culmination, Hertz wrote an opinion article in the Spectator in which he again accused Massad of bias and intimidation (“Intimidation 101,” 18 April 2010).
In the article Hertz repeated his claim that he was still weighing whether or not to take the class when he was asked to leave, even though the registration deadline had passed almost two weeks earlier. In the article he did admit however that “Massad had the right to ask me to leave the classroom for not being registered.”
He also alleged that after he left the class, he was informed, presumably by another student, that Massad denounced him in front of the class as a “Jewish spy.”
However, Massad, his two teaching assistants and a student enrolled in the class said that this claim was false. Based on these interviews, it appears Massad likely called Hertz a spy for an off-campus organization, but made no reference to his ethnic or religious background.
“He absolutely didn’t use that phrase,” said Golnar Nikpur, one of the teaching assistants. “He used it as a teaching moment,” she said, saying Massad stressed that students should be free to express their views in class.
“He didn’t dwell too much on Daniel Hertz in general,” she added.
Elazar Elhanan, the other teaching assistant (also a grandson of the Israeli general Matitiyahu Peled, a veteran of the 1967 war who joined the Israeli peace movement in the 1970s), said that Massad “explained to the class that it’s a violation of the university code.”
“I think he used the word ‘spy,’ but he didn’t say ‘Jewish spy,'” Elhanan said of the incident. “It was a bit unpleasant but it wasn’t what Hertz quoted him as saying.”
Columbia senior Shaina Low, who is enrolled in the class, also confirmed this account, saying, “he never used the word ‘Jewish.'” She quoted Massad as identifying Hertz as “a spy in the class [who] wants you to spy for him too.”
Rebutting Hertz’ claim in his op-ed that Massad also went on a “paranoid rant” denouncing him, Low said “the exchange lasted three minutes.”
After repeated phone and email inquiries, Daniel Hertz declined to be interviewed for this article.
Even Hertz concedes that Massad’s classroom manner is usually “extremely upbeat and congenial,” and Massad’s other students and assistants also say that he promotes an open debate in class in which all viewpoints are heard, including those of students who identify as strongly pro-Israel.
Nikpur, the teaching assistant, said given the past reported controversy about Massad’s teaching, she was “surprised” at “how friendly the class has been.”
She added: “Eighty percent of the comments come from the students who identify as Zionists. They take up a lot more of the class time … I have truly never seen anything that even approximates intimidation.”
Shaina Low concurred. “The Jewish students who disagree [with Massad] are the most outspoken, and he never answers in a rude or condescending way.”
Low added: “He always allows students to ask questions. I don’t think he’s intimidating at all … He doesn’t present himself as someone who is going to attack people.”
After his removal from the class, Hertz however continued to pursue Massad. When the professor gave a public lecture at the Columbia Law School on 24 February, Hertz was there, Massad recalled, typing copious notes on his laptop.
“A hunting expedition”
Rosalind Morris, a professor in Columbia’s anthropology department, said that Massad may not be the only professor targeted for surveillance or “reportage.”
“There are a number of faculty on campus who, although they haven’t undertaken the kind of systematic chasing-down that Joseph has, feel that such students have been present in their classes,” she said. “There have been a couple of cases where I asked people to identify themselves and explain their presence.”
Elaborating on the presence of such unannounced visitors in her own classes, Morris said: “When someone shows up in class, doesn’t ask permission, one notices. When that person takes notes relentlessly, one is a little bit suspicious. There is no proof that this is evidence of spying, but it is unusual [even] for students who are enrolled in class to take meticulous notes constantly.”
Morris also said groups like Campus Media Watch are using monitoring tactics to stifle debate and infringe on the classroom as a safe space for discussion of even the most controversial subjects.
“The general sense of being surveilled intrudes upon the sense of freedom in the classroom. In smaller classes it intrudes on the nature of the relations among students who are supposed to be in a free and enabled seminar circumstance where they can speak without fear.”
Such monitoring, she said, “really inhibits the kind of discourse that goes on in the classroom. Topics are taken off the table.”
Moreover, Morris said MEALAC professors and their associates are systematically targeted by groups like CMW. “These faculty members have a priori been determined to be worthy as targets. This is a kind of hunting expedition.”
She also argued that CMW and related groups are not interested in fostering engagement and dialogue. “Under those circumstances there’s no authentic listening or engagement with the class,” she said.
The ostensible aim of this eavesdropping, she said, is to record statements that when removed from context could be construed as inflammatory. “What people are looking for is decontextualizable statements that can do a certain work in a kind of spun media shtick about Columbia,” she said.
Shaina Low, the student in Massad’s class, said it was “ironic” that Hertz accused the professor of intimidation, arguing that the situation is the reverse. “I think they’re trying to intimidate the professors and the groups on campus from saying anything or holding any events that might be critical of Israel,” she said.
“It creates a bad atmosphere. No one wants to attend a class where the professor feels he’s constantly being watched,” she added.
Indeed, there is evidence that Hertz’ presence, once revealed, unsettled some students. After Hertz’ removal from the class, Nikpur noted, students voiced concerns in a discussion session about the presence of an unregistered observer affiliated with an outside group.
“Students were surprised and dismayed,” she said. “They thought it was unfair that this student would take up their class time, or that he didn’t want certain kinds of voices in the classroom.”
Sarah Alexander, a member of Just Peace, a student group at Columbia Hillel affiliated with the moderate pro-Israeli lobby J Street, said she had had contact with CMW and agreed that the group’s reportage tactics did not foster dialogue.
“On one hand people have the right to say whatever they want on the Internet,” she said. “But going to a class just to report back on what they said is counter to the goal of the classroom.”
Alexander and other student activists also said that CMW members are frequently seen at Middle East-related events on campus, especially those organized by other student groups. For example, Hertz and another CMW member were seen in mid-April taking notes at a student-sponsored public lecture with Professor Rashid Khalidi concerning Israeli policies in Jerusalem.
Rahim Kurwa, a graduate student active in Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), said CMW “is effective at trying to intimidate people.” Their presence at events spurs “a lot of talk” inside the pro-Palestinian camp, he said. Activists debate, “Should we kick them out? Should we tell them off?”
Kurwa said SJP has so far resisted the temptation to respond with its own “James Bond-ish” espionage missions. Such methods, he said, threaten to reduce the debate on the issues “to a juvenile conflict between student groups.”
Aside from Hertz, two other CMW representatives, Vice President Zahava Mandelbaum and Campus Relations officer Hunter Rees, did not return repeated emails and phone calls seeking comment for this article.
Outside influence
In his complaint to the provost about Daniel Hertz and Campus Media Watch, Massad said he specifically noted Hertz’ status as a campus fellow of Boston-based CAMERA.
It is unclear what type of support CAMERA provides to CMW. A CAMERA representative reached by phone refused to answer questions.
Nevertheless, the links between the two groups appear significant. CAMERA’s website says the organization “provides one-on-one assistance to students who encounter Middle East distortions in campus publications, flyers, rallies and classroom teaching.”
CMW, with its stated goal of combating “bias” in the media, appears to be modeled after CAMERA. Despite its name, however, most activities listed on its website are unrelated to media, and are rather related to all discussion of the Middle East in any setting, including the classroom.
CMW’s mission statement says it is “devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of the Middle East on campus” (“About,” Campus Media Watch). Likewise, CAMERA asserts it is “devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East” (“About CAMERA”).
CMW’s website links to major pro-Israel groups with family ties to Hertz. Hertz’ father, Eli E. Hertz, is the author of the website Myths and Facts which also sees itself as correcting biased information about the Middle East.
Eli Hertz, according to the bio on his websites, is president and CEO of the Hertz Technology Group, a general computing and network services company (“About,” MythsAndFacts.org).
The profile also lists involvement in several major American pro-Israel organizations. In addition to his high-level involvement in CAMERA and AIPAC, Hertz is also identified as executive vice president of the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and a trustee of the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
His bio also implies that Hertz is, in fact, Israeli: “Prior to his arrival in the US in 1974, Hertz served nearly seven years in the Israeli Defense Force as a paratrooper and was honorably discharged at the rank of Captain.”
Eli Hertz has also authored several publications, often arguing that it is legal for Israel to maintain control of the occupied West Bank. He also self-published a 253-page rebuttal to the 2004 ruling of the International Court of Justice in the Hague which pronounced Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank illegal.
He also writes opinion columns for the right-wing Israeli settler-run news website Arutz Sheva (“Making Jerusalem a Battleground,” 29 March 2010).
Public records also indicate that the elder Hertz is a frequent donor to political campaigns, mostly for pro-Israel democrats. Records available on OpenSecrets.org show that in the 2008 cycle, Hertz gave $1,000 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, but once Barack Obama secured the Democratic nomination, Hertz gave $3,000 each to the Republican National Committee and the McCain-Palin campaign.
As a Columbia student, Daniel Hertz appears to have taken after his father, pursuing computer science and adopting the “media watchdog” approach to pro-Israel activism. Hertz also cites his father’s writing in his own articles on the CMW website.
Eli Hertz was unavailable for comment, and a message left at his residence on Long Island was not immediately returned.
Daniel Hertz designed CMW’s website, which even the group’s critics note is professional in appearance, certainly above average for a student group that only came into existence two semesters ago.
Outside of his activism, acquaintances describe Hetrz as a “nice” and “friendly” college student who usually goes by the name Danny. In addition to the CMW site, Hertz also maintains a personal website (dannyhertz.com) where he posts screwball videos satirizing the behavior of his roommates.
CAMERA however is neither the first nor the only outside group to get involved in Columbia’s campus politics, nor the first to take aim at Joseph Massad.
Between 2003 and 2005, Massad was the target of an apparent bid to deny him tenure, backed by groups including The David Project and also a CMW forerunner, Campus Watch, which specialized in blacklisting professors with pro-Palestinian and anti-war views. It is not clear if any formal ties exist between CMW and Campus Watch. Campus Watch’s director, Winfield Myers, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
In 2009, in accordance with university procedures and without a public announcement, Columbia granted Massad tenure, a fact which, when leaked to the public, seems to have reignited discussion of what is usually referred to as “the controversy” concerning Massad and his teaching and scholarship. The decision provoked a fresh volley of vitriol from the right-wing blogosphere.
That summer, a group of 14 Columbia professors from outside the liberal arts sphere, including faculty in the schools of Medicine, Business, Journalism and Public Health, but not one from the School of Arts and Sciences, which granted Massad tenure, wrote a letter to Provost Steele containing a litany of procedural objections to the decision (“Profs Protesting Massad Tenure Case to Meet with Provost, campus-watch.org, 18 September 2009). None of the 14 responded to emails seeking comment for this article.
On 3 March of this year, a resolution was introduced in the New York City Council “Denouncing the decision to tenure Joseph Massad at Columbia University.” The measure was referred to a committee the same day and no further action was taken.
Given Columbia’s embattled history, these outside measures and others have made Massad and other MEALAC professors wary of any potential attempts to discredit them, no matter how small.
“I don’t think anyone is asking for a strange kind of total immunity to listening or oversight,” Professor Rosalind Morris argued. “But this instrumental, unverifiable [action by CMW], its part [in] harassment campaigns, feeds into petitions, in this case as dovetailed with this grotesque and spurious gesture in the New York City Council.”
She added: “It’s created an environment in which faculty are constantly watching their Ps and Qs on issues that people like Campus Media Watch claim should be the subject of balanced coverage, which is a cover-word for an ideologically conservative position.”
Student of Said
In Massad’s view, the attacks on him are a continuation of attacks on Columbia’s preeminent scholar, Edward Said, which intensified in the last years of the late critic’s life.
“I am attacked for a variety of reasons,” Massad said. “One, because I am at Columbia. Two, because I am a student of Edward Said’s and three that my critique continues in the tradition of Edward’s critiques.”
“The attacks on me are a continuation of the attacks on Edward,” he said, sitting in his office across the street from New York’s Riverside Church, the grand gothic building where Martin Luther King Jr. denounced the Vietnam war in April 1967.
Massad retold the story of the “controversy” that erupted over the photo of Said hurling the stone along the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Said was visiting southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military had recently left, ending 18 years of occupation.
After visiting the now-empty al-Khiam prison, where Lebanese and Palestinians were tortured for years by Israel’s armed forces and their Lebanese proxies, Said visited the village of Kafr Kila, along the border with Israel.
It was there that the infamous photograph was taken of Said tossing a rock into the no-man’s land, the photo that was denounced by the ADL and the Zionist Organization of America.
“There were many people [at the border,] all of them … elated by the absence of Israeli troops,” Said wrote at the time. “For a moment, I joined in: the spirit of the place infected everyone with the same impulse, to make a symbolic gesture of joy that the occupation had ended.”
He further wrote, “one stone tossed into an empty place scarcely warrants a second thought.”
In 2002, a year before Said’s death, in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US, as the second Palestinian intifada raged and the US prepared to go to war on Iraq, Campus Watch was founded. Said died in 2003, before the release of Columbia Unbecoming. “Within a year of [Said’s] death the attacks quadrupled,” Massad remembered.
Then as now, Massad says his own critics have overstated their case.
“They thought when Edward died that they had gotten rid of him. So they tried to do the impossible to make sure I could not stay here, and they couldn’t. And so their failure was total. They went berserk.”
“It’s an inability to realize that they’ve lost the war.”
Journalist Jared Malsin worked in the West Bank for two and a half years for the Palestinian news agency Ma’an. His website is jaredmalsin.wordpress.com