Jogo, a correspondent, points us in the direction of a piece on the Institute for Global Jewish Studies on Holocaust Denial on Facebook, the online social networking site. As at Comment Is Free, ‘freedom to …’ butts up against ‘freedom from …’.
Student protester arrested on Israeli Campus
May 29, 2009 — David Hirsh
This piece, by Mel Bezalel, is from Jpost.com.
A student distributing leaflets expressing opposition to the new anti-Nakba Day Knesset bill outside the Ben-Gurion University campus in Beersheba on Sunday was arrested by police.
The arrest resulted in a student protest later that night that took place alongside a ceremony attended by the school’s board of governors and VIPs being awarded honorary doctorates.
Noah Slor, 27, a master’s student in Middle Eastern studies and a teaching assistant, was handing out fliers along with four Arab student activists on Sunday afternoon. After being asked to stand at least a meter away from the school’s gate and taking up the issue with a university security guard, she was arrested by police for trespassing and humiliating a public official – the security guard – and questioned at the Beersheba police station for three hours.
The incident is the latest to occur as part of a broader dispute sparked by the university’s plans to constrain student demonstrations with bureaucracy and fees.
“Arabs in Israel are a bit afraid to go against such orders, because they always have something to lose,” Slor told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “For me as a Jew, it’s easy, so I tried to make a couple of phone calls… and I was told I was standing in a private area in which we’re not allowed to distribute fliers, which is nonsense.”
Slor was then informed by security that if the group did not move, the police would be called. The activists remained and within 15 minutes, the officers arrived and arrested Slor.
Slor said she believed the university realized its actions were “getting out of hand” but couldn’t stop the chain of events once they had begun: “They realized they made a mistake, but it was a matter of ego and they had to do something, and charging Arabs would be perceived as racist, so I think I was the right person at the right time.”
After two-and-a-half hours of questioning by police, the university’s security team called the station to drop the charges, on the direct orders of university president Rivka Carmi. Slor thinks that Carmi’s action was a direct result of pressure from professors who voiced outrage at her arrest.
Despite the charges being dropped, she was informed that a criminal file was still outstanding. Slor must now begin an extensive, bureaucratic process to have the file closed. She also intends to file a complaint against the security guard and is lobbying for his dismissal.
Sixty students incensed by the arrest held a demonstration in the evening, outside the university ceremony.
They stood for an hour, with tape covering their mouths to signify being gagged by the university, and holding placards reading: “Security department = secret police.”
University president Carmi told students she would meet with them, but failed to appear.
Some of the university’s governors conversed with demonstrators, along with artist Dani Karavan and actress Gila Almagor, who both reportedly shook hands with students.
University spokesman Amir Rosenblitt commented on Monday: “Yesterday afternoon, political activists distributed fliers against the government decision about the Nakba. University regulations permit the distribution of fliers on the condition that it’s done off campus. The activists, who were distributing fliers in an area considered part of the campus, paid no attention to security guards who tried to get them to stop. The police were called and detained one female activist and one security guard to give testimony, and afterward both were released.”
As a result of recent university security clashes with students, an open panel discussion on the topic is to be held next week, spearheaded by Prof. Neve Gordon, head of Ben-Gurion University’s department of politics and government.
This piece, by Mel Bezalel, is from Jpost.com.
Protesting the Israeli police’s disruption of PalFest
May 26, 2009 — Mira VogelThis illustrates as clearly as anything the dereliction of any restrictive or punitive policy based on who, rather than what.
“Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza struggle to live a normal life while penned in by checkpoints, surveillance, and violence. Palestinians in East Jerusalem are isolated from their brothers and sisters in Ramallah. Bethlehem is cut off from Nablus. The elaborate system of checkpoints and Jewish-settler only roads in the West Bank have barricaded one Palestinian community from another. In addition the deep economic, educational and personal grief this swiss-cheese prison has produced, Palestinian cultural life struggles to survive despite all the odds.”
“The festival began as a call from Edward Said, to “reaffirm the power of culture over the culture of power.” As participants were gathering, the Israeli policeshut down the theater. The French consul who was in attendance, offered the French Cultural Center as a new venue in the moment, in order for the festival to continue.”
“Shortly before the opening event was due to begin, a squad of around a dozen Israeli border police walked into the Palestinian National Theatre, in East Jerusalem, and ordered it to be closed.
Police brought a letter from the Israeli minister of internal security which said the event could not be held because it was a political activity connected to the Palestinian Authority.
Members of the audience and the eight speakers were ordered to leave, but the event was held several minutes later, on a smaller scale, in the garden of the nearby French Cultural Centre.
Israeli police were deployed on the street outside.
“We’re so taken aback. It’s is completely, completely independent,” Egyptian novelist Soueif, who is chairing the Palestine Festival of Literature, said.
“I think it’s very telling,” she told the crowd at the French centre. “Our motto, which is taken from the late Edward Said, is to pit the power of culture against the culture of power.”
…
“This is the policy being implemented with regard to any events which are either organised or funded by the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem,” he said.
He added that previous Palestinian events in the city, including the press centre for the pope, had been closed under the same policy.
However, Rafiq Husseini, the chief of staff to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who was in last night’s audience, was dismissive of the Israeli actions.
“It shows how the Israelis are not thinking, he said. “This is a cultural event. There is no terrorism, there is nobody shooting. It’s just a cultural event.”
Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive:
“Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif gave this account at palfest.org.
“I saw 10 old friends in the first minute, all the Jerusalem cultural and academic set were there, a lot of Internationals, a lot of press,” she wrote. “We stood in the early evening light, by the tables laden with books and food and flowers, nibbled at kofta and borek and laughed and chatted and introduced new friends to old. . . . Then we started moving towards the auditorium and I heard someone say quietly, ‘They’ve come.’”"
“…those in the diaspora who campaign long and hard against a boycott of Israeli culture should be raging with anger at this latest disgrace.”
PalFest is ongoing - follow Palfest’s organiser and author blogs, videos and pictures.
Israeli universities protest High Court’s decision to allow IDF to exclude Palestinian students from Israel
May 26, 2009 — David Hirsh
Six of the seven universities, including top officials from the Technion, the Hebrew University, the Feinberg Seminary of the Weizmann Institute, Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa and Ben-Gurion University also protested the army’s criteria for granting permits.
In a letter sent to Defense Minister Ehud Barak on May 12, the universities charged that the criteria for considering granting entry permits to Palestinian students accepted by Israeli universities “constitutes a gross and harmful intervention by military elements in purely academic considerations.”
Read the whole report in the Jerusalem Post.
Mira adds:
On the basis of national identity, Palestinian students are still being denied opportunities to pursue educational opportunities in Israel. A blanket ban was widely opposed within Israel and internationally, and was eventually overturned by The Israeli Supreme Court. However, the military continues to arrogate decision-making on who enters Israel to study which subject, with students in some subject areas (particularly physical sciences) subjected to reportedly almost unmeetable criteria.
An update from Gisha, the Israeli legal centre for freedom of movement who petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court, includes the following:
“Prof. Alon Harel of Hebrew University, who asked to join Gisha’s petition along with four other professors, said at the end of the hearing: “We are being forcibly prevented from accepting students who can make a decidedly valuable contribution to higher education in Israel. I call upon the Court and the defense establishment to respect academic freedom – the decision whether or not to accept a student needs to be the exclusive decision of the university, while the military should be limited to performing a security check.”
The Israeli Supreme Court invites Palestinian students who are being prevented from taking up their places at Israeli institutions to pursue their case, whether or not they meet the criteria established by the military, but clearly this hurdle is likely to deter or defeat Palestinian students from taking up their places.
The thing to do is to support the Israeli universities in resisting the imposition of non-security criteria, as described in the piece that David linked to above. And it’s worth reading Jon Pike again on why boycotters are so sluggish about pursuing academic freedom for Israeli academics and for Palestinians who want to study in Israel.
Jacqueline Rose, Jonathan Freedland, David Hirsh ***TODAY***
April 25, 2009 — David Hirsh
Jonathan Freedland, Jacqueline Rose and David Hirsh, chaired by Ned Temko. Click here for details and tickets.
The Guardian production of Caryl Churchill’s Antisemitic Play
April 25, 2009 — David HirshDo not confine Jews to the couch – David Hirsh
April 7, 2009 — David Hirsh
This piece, by David Hirsh, is from the Jewish Chronicle.
Jewish intellectuals who criticise Israel in psychological terms are wrong-headed
A therapist guides us on a journey to the frightening places inside ourselves and helps us to find ways to live with our demons. While we might do well to examine our own crazinesses with our therapists, we do not expect to have to answer for them in public and we expect our therapist to be on our side. Philosopher Michel Foucault warned that the sciences of the mind are also techniques of power and they have hostile as well as healing potential.
Jacqueline Rose, a professor at London University, argues in her book, A Question of Zion, that Israel should be understood psychoanalytically. She says the trauma resulting from the Holocaust is the root cause of the difficulty Israelis seem to have in living peacefully with their neighbours. Recently, she inspired Caryl Churchill to write the play Seven Jewish Children, which portrays Jews bringing up their children in a neurotic, dishonest and dysfunctional way and which many have said is antisemitic. Rose herself briefed the actors at the theatre.
In The Independent last month, Antony Lerman, former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, also used psychology to explain current events, offering his own version of what Israeli psychologist Daniel Bar Tal reports about Israeli Jews. Lerman cheekily extrapolates the results to apply to British Jews. The consciousness of Jews “is characterised by a sense of victimisation, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanisation of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering”. Lerman believes it to be a scientific discovery that “the Jewish public does not want to be confused with the facts.”
Yuck, I’m beginning to dislike these Jews already. If this collection of stereotypes came from David Irving, we would doubtless dismiss it as antisemitism.
I think critics of Israeli policies should make their arguments politically and with reasons. They should avoid ascribing to Jews collectively a pathological inability to act rationally. Israel is a state and acts according to what its leaders and its electorate calculate to be its national interest. Israel may be wrong. It may even be very wrong. But making peace with its neighbours is a matter for politics, not for therapy.
These three intellectuals all imply that Jews indoctrinate their children to be indifferent to non-Jewish suffering and that this is the key factor explaining Israel’s attack on targets in Gaza and on the civilians near them.
Leaving aside his cod-psychology, Lerman offers two arguments. One, with which I agree, is that the Israeli project of settling the West Bank is wrong, morally and pragmatically. His other is that Jews should stop saying that criticism of the occupation is antisemitic. Actually, Jews do not often raise the issue of antisemitism to de-legitimise criticism of Israel, not because they support the settlements, nor because they are psychologically damaged. The usual reason for Jews to raise the issue of antisemitism is that they are concerned about antisemitism, even when it resembles criticism of Israel.
Meanwhile, in her book, Rose argues that Zionism was from the beginning less a political movement than a messianic one; not rational but more like a religion. The Holocaust, she thinks, rendered Zionists even more irrational. And, after Gaza, she asked how the most persecuted people in history became “violent oppressors”.
If we heard President Ahmadinejad call Jews “violent oppressors”, we would surely respond by saying that it is not “the Jews” but the occupation which is oppressive. We would contextualise the conflict historically and say that neither “the Jews” nor Israel are more psychologically prone to oppressiveness than anyone else.
Leaving aside the vile implication that the Jews are the new Nazis, the idea that Jews should know better after the Holocaust is astonishing. Auschwitz was not a positive learning experience. Many Jews, traumatised perhaps, but not necessarily either mad or bad, learnt that it would be better to have a state and an army with which they could defend themselves if need be.
But Rose thinks that the Jews’ inability to put the trauma behind them in a psychologically healthy way explains Israel’s attack on Gaza. She does not explain how “Germans” have been able so successfully to recover psychologically from their part in the Holocaust and to build a peaceful and multicultural society. Can we congratulate post-national Europeans for having learnt the lessons of Auschwitz while we berate “the Jews” for having failed to do so? And how have Rose and Lerman themselves emerged so healthily from the traumatic family history which so damaged the rest of us?
Anthony Julius has shown that there is a long tradition of antisemites using Jewish witnesses against “the Jews”. Rose and Lerman’s allegations about how Jews indoctrinate their children are reminiscent of this insider testimony. But the problem is not that they speak publicly; the problem is that they transform political questions into psychological diagnoses.
David Hirsh
David Hirsh is a lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths and the editor of Engage, at www.EngageOnline.org.uk. His ‘Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections’ is downloadable from the website of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism
This piece, by David Hirsh, is from the Jewish Chronicle.
J Street thinks that 7 Jewish Children sparks valuable debate
April 5, 2009 — David HirshJ Street, which aims to be a pro-peace alternative to American Israel advocacy groups, has said that it “stands unequivocally behind” the decision of a Washington DC theatre group to produce the play. But J Street says that it “takes no position” on the content of the play. It would appear then that it has taken a position, at least insofar as to affirm its belief that the play is not antisemitic. That is if we assume that J Street does not think that the production of an antisemitic play would have value in sparking debate. The whole statement is as follows:
The decision to feature Seven Jewish Children at Theater J should be judged not on the basis of the play’s content but, rather, on its value in sparking a difficult but necessary conversation within our community. To preclude even the possibility of such a discussion does a disservice not only to public discourse, but also to the very values of rigorous intellectual engagement and civil debate on which our community prides itself.
J Street takes no position on the content of Seven Jewish Children – it is, after all, a play, and not policy. We do, however, stand unequivocally behind Theater J in its decision to feature programming that examines different facets of this critical debate over how our community can best support Israel. Such an opportunity for individual and collective reflection is integral in informing our shared interest in bringing true peace and security to Israel.
Amy Spitalnick
J Street | www.jstreet.org
Howard Jacobson and many others have judged that the play is antisemitic because it accuses Jews of bringing up their children in a particularly neurotic, dishonest and damaging way. That would be an antisemitic accusation, wouldn’ t it?
Is J Street under an obligation to take that kind of criticism seriously? If the play is antisemitic J Street has a duty to say why and how, and to critique and to deconstruct the antisemitism, doesn’t it? It has a duty to defend American theatre against antisemitism, doesn’t it?
In reality J Street has taken a position that the play is not antisemitic but, on the contrary, that it is fair comment and it is part of a legitimate debate. J Street has a duty to make that case rather than simply assert it to be true.
