[Jewish] Fwd: [HF] Friedman to professors

[hsSS at hampshire.edu]

Folks--

     More ammunition for addressing knee-jerk reactionaries on campus...  This 
was circulated on the Hillel Faculty listserv.

                            Holly Snyder


Tom Friedman talks directly to faculty members, con- and pro-Israel.

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Campus Hypocrisy

By Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist, 
The New York Times, Wednesday, October 16, 2002

The Washington Post recently reported that students and faculty at a
growing number of universities are pressuring their schools "into
selling their holdings in companies that do business with Israel,
prompting a counter-campaign among Jewish groups that consider the
effort part of a creeping tide of anti-Semitism on campus." Here's what
I would say to both sides on this issue: 

Memo to professors and students leading the divestiture campaign: Your
campaign for divestiture from Israel is deeply dishonest and
hypocritical, and any university that goes along with it does not
deserve the title of institution of higher learning.

You are dishonest because to single out Israel as the only party to
blame for the current impasse is to perpetrate a lie. Historians can
debate whether the Camp David and Clinton peace proposals for a
Palestinian state were for 85, 90, or 97 percent of the West Bank and
Gaza. But what is not debatable is what the proper Palestinian response
should have been. It should have been to tell Israel and America that
their peace proposals were the first fair offer they had ever put forth,
and although they still fell short of what Palestinians feel is a just
two-state solution, Palestinians were now prepared to work with Israel
and America to achieve that end. The proper response was not a
Palestinian intifada and 100 suicide bombers, which are what brought
Ariel Sharon to power.

It is shameful that at a time when some Palestinians are writing that
they made a historic mistake in not nurturing the Clinton peace offer,
pro-Palestinian professors and students in America and Europe pretend
that the only reason the occupation persists is because of Israeli
obstinacy. This approach will never gain the Palestinians a state, and
those who dabble in it are simply prolonging Palestinian misery.

You are also hypocrites. How is it that Egypt imprisons the leading
democracy advocate in the Arab world, after a phony trial, and not a
single student group in America calls for divestiture from Egypt? (I'm
not calling for it, but the silence is telling.) How is it that Syria
occupies Lebanon for 25 years, chokes the life out of its democracy, and
not a single student group calls for divestiture from Syria? How is it
that Saudi Arabia denies its women the most basic human rights, and bans
any other religion from being practiced publicly on its soil, and not a
single student group calls for divestiture from Saudi Arabia?

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But
singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction — out of
all proportion to any other party in the Middle East — is anti-Semitic,
and not saying so is dishonest. 

Memo to Israel's supporters: Just because there are anti-Semites who
blame Israel for everything that is wrong does not mean that whatever
Israel does is right, or in its self-interest, or just. The settlement
policy Israel has been pursuing is going to lead to the demise of the
Jewish state. No, settlements are not the reason for the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to think they do not exacerbate it,
and are not locking Israel into a permanent occupation, is also
dishonest. 

If the settlers get their way, Israel will de facto or de jure annex the
West Bank and Gaza. And if current Palestinian birth rates continue, by
around the year 2010 there will be more Palestinians than Jews living in
Israel, the West Bank and Gaza combined. When that happens, the demand
of the college anti-Israel movements will change.

They won't bother anymore with divestiture. They will simply demand:
"One Man, One Vote. Since Israel has de facto annexed the territories,
and there is now just one political entity between Jordan and the
Mediterranean, we want majority rule." If you think it is hard to defend
Israel on campus today, imagine doing it in 2010, when the colonial
settlers have so locked Israel into the territories it can rule them
only by apartheid-like policies.

This is not a call for unilateral Israeli withdrawal. This is a call for
everyone who wants Israel to remain a Jewish state — and not become a
binational state — to urge President Bush to renew the U.S. push for a
two-state solution. If you think the Bush team is doing Israel a favor
with its diplomacy of benign neglect, if you think the only campaign
Jews need to be involved in today is with hypocrites on U.S. college
campuses — and not with extremists in their own camp — you too are
telling yourselves a very big and dangerous lie. 


           HF: HILLEL-FACULTY  Commentary and discussion
           for university/college *Jewish* faculty/staff
           To subscribe if faculty or staff:  HF at niu.edu

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