Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism

I notice that I haven't written a thing since February 25. How did the time pass so fast? Well, yes, we had seven houseguests for about 10 days, starting on the 28th, and yes, after that batch left, another dropped in for four more days. I'm still doing the laundry... Anyway, it was a period of interesting discussions and one of the topics covered was the plight of the Palestinians. This subject came up because I received an email from a group planning all kinds of anti-war demonstrations and so on. Problem is, they are connecting their demonstration with "free immigration..." for everyone except Palestinians. That rather bugged me. If any group of people need our help, and needed it years ago, it is the Palestinians. And any one who does not speak out about the violence being done to this gentle people may find themselves, one day, having no one to speak out for them. This "anti-war pro-immigration" group wrote: "We must elevate the level of struggle to win full rights for ALL immigrants, especially undocumented workers and their families. Amnesty for the undocumented! Full rights for all immigrants!" Well, gee... what a way NOT to get the support of the average American! Now, don't get me wrong: I don't have a problem with anybody demonstrating for any particular right they want to demonstrate for - or against; immigrant rights, abortion rights, gay marriages, stem cell research, Terri Schiavo, or whatever. The problem lies in mixing all of that up with the effort to bring peace to our planet. Why can't such groups just stick to the basic agenda: STOP THE WAR on the THIRD WORLD. Bring the troops hom, put an end to stealing the U.S. taxpayer's money to underwrite the aggression of Israel. Fact is, most average Americans - blue collar Americans - who ARE against the war in Iraq, are ALSO against immigration! They are probably against gay marriages, too. So what kind of anti-war movement would combine things that they HAVE to know are repellant to the average American with "stop the war?" Are they trying to associate everyone who wants peace with everyone who wants gay marriage and to give American jobs to immigrants? Gee! Get a clue! As it happens, I'm not the only one who sees this as a COINTELPRO action. Dr John Spritzler of newdemocracyworld.org argues that our "ultimate enemy' , 'people who direct the discourse both on the left and the right' use such causes as 'same-sex marriage, affirmative action, gun control and immigration rights to keep anti-war movement isolated from the majority of American people. " Spritzler further says:

"They want to make sure that the anti-war movement remains isolated from the majority of American people. How to do that? Make Americans believe that the anti-war movement is wedded to views which most Americans find extremely controversial, namely the [so-called] liberal agenda of same-sex marriage, affirmative action, gun control etc. "Common sense would say to unite Americans around the important things they agree upon -- no wars fought for hidden agendas, real democracy instead of fake democracy, things like that; not things like same-sex marriage for crying out loud. The function of liberalism in the hands of its elite leaders is to ensure that working class Americans see their only choice as being either the Rush Limbaughs and George Bushes on the right, who pretend to respect them on social issues, or the Clinton and Hollywood glitterati liberals on the left who hold them in utter contempt. "

What's more, Palestine is the core issue; there should be no anti-war demonstrations without Palestine referred to. Standing up for the Palestinians allows us to demolish the wall of Jewish denial without entering the loaded 'like or dislike of Jews' question. Which brings us to the following:

Israel and Palestine, Choosing Sides

Alison Weir Founder and Executive Director of If Americans Knew Chapter from Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Seven Stories Press; 2004)

The most monumental cover-up in media history may be the one I’m about to describe. In my entire experience with American journalism, I have never found anything as extreme, sustained, and omnipresent.

Three and a half years ago, when the current Palestinian uprising began, I started to look into Israel and Palestine. I had never paid much attention to this issue before and so – unlike many people – I knew I was completely uninformed about it. I had no idea that I was pulling a loose piece of thread that would steadily unravel, until nothing would ever be quite as it had been before.

When I listened to news reports on this issue, I noticed that I was hearing a great deal about Israelis and very little about Palestinians. I decided to go to the Internet to see what would turn up, and discovered international reports about Palestinian children being killed daily, often shot in the head, hundreds being injured, eyes being shot out.¹ And yet little of all this was appearing in NPR reports, the New York Times, or the San Francisco Chronicle.

There was also little historic background and context in the stories, so this, too, I began to fill in for myself, reading what has turned into a multitude of books on the history and other aspects of the conflict.² I attended presentations and read international reports.

The more I looked into all this, the more it seemed that I had stumbled onto a cover-up that quite possibly dwarfed anything I had seen before. My former husband had been one of the founders of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), an institution known for its powerful exposés. He and CIR have won numerous well-deserved awards from Project Censored from the very beginning of its creation. Nevertheless, the duration and violence of the injustice I was discovering, and the extent of its omission and misrepresentation – even in Project Censored itself, seemed unparalleled.

In February and March of 2001 I went to the Palestinian territories as a freelance reporter, traveling alone throughout Gaza and the West Bank. I saw tragedy and devastation far beyond what was being reported in the American media; I saw communities destroyed, ancient orchards razed, croplands plowed under. I saw children who had been shot in the stomach, in the back, in the head. I still see them.

I saw people convulsing and writhing in pain from a mysterious poison gas that had been lobbed at them; they said it felt like there were knives in their stomach.³ I talked to men who had been tortured.⁴

I watched as a mother wept for her small son, and I took pictures of his spilled blood. I watched a son grieve for his mother, killed on her way home from the market on a day that I was told was the Muslim equivalent of the day before Christmas, or Passover, and I thought of my own son, the same age.

I listened to old people who described the start of this holocaust – over fifty years ago, at the end of an earlier one. They described what it was like when three-quarters of your entire population is ethnically cleansed from their homes and land, children dying along the roadside while aircraft shell the fleeing families. They told of dozens of massacres of entire villages, and I’ve since read accounts by Israeli soldiers, published in Israeli publications, of how they raped the women, and then killed them, of how they used sticks to crush the skulls of children.⁵ I discovered the message sent by Menachem Begin, later elected Israeli prime minister, to troops following the massacre of Palestinians in one village, Deir Yassin:

“Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Convey my regards to all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands. We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack...Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue this until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.” ⁶

Censorship At Work

And I saw the cover-up. I saw how one of the most massive and brutal displacements of a people in modern times has largely been swept under the rug; how the continuing and ruthless methods used by a theocratic, exclusionary state⁷ to rid itself of people of the “wrong” religon/ethnicity are covered up. Let me describe how this censorship works.

A few days after the deaths of the little boy and of the mother I mentioned above, there was a suicide bombing in Israel. I went to a hotel in East Jerusalem and saw that the New York Times had published a front-page story about it.⁸

I wondered if the paper had run similar headlines about, or at least had mentioned, the Palestinian deaths in the days before, and I discovered that they had not. But I noticed that the story about the suicide bombing had at least contained some information about these preceding Palestinian deaths – one phrase each, in the second paragraph. Near the end of the story, full of extensive, graphic descriptions of the Israeli tragedies, I also saw that there were a few paragraphs about Israeli crowds beating random Palestinian Israelis to a pulp – one was almost killed – and chanting “Kill Arabs.”

A few days later I was back in the San Francisco Bay Area, and went to the library to see how the San Francisco Chronicle had covered these events. (I had emailed them on-the-scene reports, incidentally, about both Palestinian deaths.) I noticed that this paper, also, had neglected these deaths at the time. It had, however, carried the New York Times report about the suicide bombing that had followed. When I looked at the S.F. Chronicle’s version of this report, however, I was astounded: someone had surgically excised the sentences near the top of the story telling of the Israeli killing of a nine-year-old Palestinian boy and a mother of three. The person had also deleted all information about the Israeli mob violence.

Since that time I’ve monitored the media closely, and investigated numerous similar incidents, in an attempt to discover the nuts and bolts of obfuscation on Israel. [...]

And then, this:

The Witchhunts Continue: Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism

- by M. Junaid Alam

Rape, massacre, theft, torture, ethnic cleansing: these are not crimes which nations can defend with ease - especially when unearthed by their own historians. Israel recently faced this most troubling predicament. Combing through declassified state archives, Israeli scholars of the past twenty years have discovered their nation was founded upon the mass expulsion and deliberate destruction of the native Palestinian people. (1) Israel, it turned out, was far more Goliath than David. Since this presented somewhat of a public relations problem for a state still engaged in brutalizing Palestinians and stealing their land, a new self-justifying rationale needed to be authored.

Enter the "new anti-Semitism." This doctrine turns reality on its head, declaring criticism of Israel's racist behavior to be itself racist - "anti-Semitic." Empathy for Palestinians being beaten, bullied, and bulldozed out of existence, the doctrine goes, is nothing but some disguised expression of Jew-hatred. Goose-stepping Germans and uprooted Palestinians are portrayed as part of the same unbroken line of anti-Semitism, even though those inhabiting concentration camps today - "the largest ever to exist," says Israeli historian Baruch Kimmerling - are the Palestinians themselves. (2) But no matter. Abusing the memory of Holocaust victims to shut down criticism of Israeli crimes - crimes unearthed mostly by Jewish historians - may be obscene, but it is also effective.

Wielding this new ideological weapon, Israel's champions aim to cut down pro-Palestinian voices inside America with the same ruthlessness Israeli soldiers employ to shoot up Palestinian children outside their homes. (3) The latest targets in this well-organized hit are Arab-American professors at Columbia University who teach Middle Eastern studies. The targets have been judiciously selected. Since these particular professors are Arab in an age when bombing and torturing Arabs has virtually become a national sport, they make for easy prey; and since they have added to their original sin of being Arab the even graver sin of speaking the truth about Israel's past - no less in a country which subsidizes Israel's existence - they also make for necessary prey. [...]

http://www.lefthook.org/Politics/Alam031305.html

Again let me say, if WE do not speak for the Palestinians, when the time comes that we need someone to speak for us - a day that is coming soon - who will be left?