by Ben Shapiro
IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL THE PROFESSOR PROTESTS . . .
After major military operations in Iraq were over, the UCLA Academic Senate, composed of thirty-two hundred professors (only a few of whom actually vote—quorum is two hundred eligible voters present at some time during the meeting), decided to do something about the war. They condemned it. After Iraqis had cheered the downfall of Saddam Hussein. After mass graves had been uncovered. After children had been released from Hussein’s prisons.
None of it mattered. A resolution was brought before the Academic Senate condemning President Bush for his “preventative war,” opposing the establishment of an American “protectorate” in Iraq, affirming the Academic Senate’s “commitment to addressing international conflicts through the rule of law and the United Nations,” and calling for post-war Iraq to be placed under UN jurisdiction.
Exactly 196 professors voted. The vote was surprisingly close. The measure passed, 180-7. Nine professors abstained.
It was not the place of the Academic Senate to deal with this issue. The purpose of the Academic Senate is to deal with matters in the curriculum, matters of standards and tenure. But the professors thought differently.
I interviewed Professor Karoly Holczer, a member of the senate who voted in favor of the resolution. Holczer stated that “the few academic senates in the country are the only organizations who should take a stand on human morals. It’s more than our right, it’s our obligation.” But isn’t this a political statement? I asked. Isn’t this outside the purview of the Senate? “This is not a political statement,” he answered. “It’s a statement about those kinds of human values that every single person believes in . . . This is an example that I really hope every successful teacher shows for his students.”
Holczer also stated that a US protectorate might be worse than a Saddam Hussein regime. “It’s not a great idea to see a national library burning, a national museum destroyed,” he remarked. But now that the US had toppled Saddam, Holczer suggested that we turn over control of Iraq to the UN, suggesting that the UN would be fairer than the United States.
Then I asked Professor Holczer the key question: Do his opinion, and the opinions of his colleagues, enter the classroom? “I really hope so,” he replied.
The brainwashing continues. Each day, students hear about how the US has entered a quagmire, is bungling the reconstruction, is cheating the Iraqi people. The war is over, but not for the professors.
A DEFEAT FOR THE PROFESSORS?
Professors have had quite an impact on student opinions when it comes to the war in Iraq. At New York University, twelve hundred students ditched class in a show of anti-war solidarity. At University of California at Berkeley, fifteen hundred students rallied at Sproul Plaza as the war in Iraq began and demanded that Baghdad University be declared a “sister school.” Both NYU and Berkeley were awarded a slot in Mother Jones’ “Top 10 Activist Campuses.”65
As the mass media has noted, much of the anti-war movement gained its strength from college students, hundreds of thousands of whom have participated in protests around America. But the conversion wasn’t complete. At universities like Yale and Berkeley, professors state that vast majorities of the faculty oppose war in Iraq. Yet students polled by the Yale Daily News were split right down the middle about the war. Professors haven’t gained a complete success, and they’re fighting mad about it.
“We used to like to offend people,” Professor Martha Saxton of Amherst College told the New York Times, who is disappointed with the lack of student anti-war activism. “We loved being bad, in the sense that we were making a statement. Why is there no joy now?” Professors like Saxton feel that students are missing out on the college experience if they refuse to protest, 1960s style.
At Amherst, the Progressive Students Association requested that the student government ask professors to discuss war in Iraq for fifteen minutes in class. The student government refused. In the Amherst dining hall, forty professors paraded in to protest the war, where they were greeted by a strong negative reaction from the students, one of whom came to physical blows with a professor.
Students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison are also disappointing their professors. “In Madison, teach-ins were as common as bratwurst,” lamented Professor Austin Sarat of UW. “There was a certain nobility in being gassed. Now you don’t get gassed. You walk into a dining hall and hand out information pamphlets.” Apparently provoking the police into throwing tear gas is a badge of honor for these faculty members.
“My job is not to get my students to agree with me,” insists Professor Barry O’Connell of Amherst. But “there is a second when I hear them, and my heart just falls.”66
There is still hope for American youth. Just keep them as far as possible from their professors.
10
“ZIONIST PIGS”
During August 2001, my family and I traveled to Israel for the first time.
We went with a tour group, and we journeyed across virtually the entire country, from the scenic and lush greenery of the Shomron to the barren desert of the Negev. The Bible came alive; these were real places. We saw the spot where David slew Goliath. We prayed near the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, and we explored the tunnels dug next to the massive surrounding wall, a section of which is known as the Western Wall.
We stopped in Efrat, an American suburb planted in the disputed territories; it looked like Beverly Hills transported to Israel. We went to the beautiful city of Haifa in the North. We visited the gigantic Ramon Crater in the South. We saw dingy Arab villages surrounding cosmopolitan Jewish outposts—the difference was marked and stark.
There were places we could not go. We could not go to Hebron, the second holiest site in Judaism, to visit the tomb of the Patriarchs. Many of the roads were surrounded by cement barriers to prevent Palestinian snipers from shooting at tourists. We walked through East Jerusalem surrounded by Israeli armed guards so that we would not be killed by Arabs living in that part of the Old City.
And we were at the Knesset in Jerusalem when the tour guide got a phone call. A Palestinian terrorist had blown himself up at Sbarro’s pizza restaurant in Jerusalem. My family and I were to have been on that corner two hours later that day. Others weren’t so lucky. Fifteen people were slaughtered, and another 132 were wounded, many seriously—bolts in their bodies, nails in their brains, limbs blown off. A Los Angeles teacher, Shoshana Greenbaum, and her unborn child were murdered that day—the teacher was an only child, the only hope for her parents to have grandchildren.
The rest of the trip was solemn. Everyone was on edge. My father and I were constantly on the lookout for Arab-looking men carrying bags or wearing heavy coats. Every time we saw an Israeli Defense Force soldier carrying a gun, we sighed with relief. When we went to eat at Burger King on Ben-Yehuda Street, we sat on the top level of the restaurant, just in case a bomber detonated on the bottom level.
Being in such close contact with a country under siege made me acutely aware of the one-sided anti-Israel sentiment among the college professors when I returned. Since September 11, anti-Semitism on campus has spun out of control. Criticizing Israel does not make someone anti-Semitic. Criticizing Israel’s very existence and advocating measures that will lead to its destruction—criticizing Zionism—does make someone anti-Semitic. Singling out Israel, holding Israel to a higher standard, forcing Israel to act with no regard for self-preservation, is anti-Semitic. As Martin Luther King so succinctly stated to an audience at Harvard University in 1968, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.”1
Anti-Semitism on campus is getting so bad that on September 17, 2002, Harvard President Lawrence Summers addressed students at a morning prayer service at the Memorial Church. “I speak with you today not as president of the university but as a concerned member of our community about something I never thought I would become seriously worried about— the issue of anti-Semitism,” Summers declared. He co
ntinued,
Indeed, I was struck during my years in the Clinton administration that the existence of an economic leadership team . . . that was very Jewish passed without comment or notice. Without thinking about it much, I attributed all this to progress—to an ascendancy of enlightenment and tolerance. A view that prejudice is increasingly put aside. A view that while the politics of the Middle East was enormously complex, and contentious, the question of the right of a Jewish state to exist had been settled in the affirmative by the world community.
But today, I am less complacent. Less complacent and comfortable because there is disturbing evidence of an upturn in anti-Semitism globally, and also because of some developments closer to home. . . . Of course academic communities should be and always will be places that allow any viewpoint to be expressed. And certainly there is much to be debated about the Middle East and much in Israel’s foreign and defense policy that can be and should be vigorously challenged.
But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.2
“OCCUPATION”
Professors believe that all problems in the Middle East started with the Jews. Many believe that Israel is an illegitimate state to begin with, despite a consistent Jewish presence on the land for three thousand years and the complete lack of any government called “Palestinian.” But the biggest problem is the “occupied territories,” land won by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel was attacked by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
Professor M. Shahid Alam of Northeastern University explains the false professorial version of Israeli history: “Increasingly, the world outside the United States understands that Israel is not a ‘normal’ country. . . . Israel emerged in 1948—through the conquest and ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Palestinians. Yet this was not enough. . . . In 1967 this shortfall was corrected when Israel, after defeating Egypt, Syria and Jordan, occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Another, smaller campaign of ethnic cleansing was introduced into this second round of conquests.”3 Ethnic cleansing? Where were the mass graves, the gas chambers? And why do hard facts say otherwise—that 539,000 Arabs left,4 that Arab leaders told Arabs within Israel to leave,5 and that 68 percent of those Arabs never even saw an Israeli soldier?6
But the myth of the “brutal occupation” remains, even despite the fact that since the Oslo Accords, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have lived primarily under the rule of Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority.
While discussing Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, one UCLA English professor compared Israel’s possession of the West Bank to the enslavement of blacks during eighteenth and nineteenth century America.7 Maybe I missed it, but I don’t see Palestinians toiling in cotton fields, being whipped by their Israeli masters. The comparison is a true insult to the travails of the black slaves.
“There are 149 substantive articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that protect the rights of every one of these Palestinians living in occupied Palestine. The Israeli government is currently violating, and has since 1967 been violating, almost each and every one of these,” sniffs Professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois School of Law.8
“Israel looks increasingly like South Africa to the rest of the world,” sneered Professor Fouad M. Moughrabi of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.9 “Did the Black South Africans immigrate or did they leave South Africa because they suffered a great deal under the ugly Apartheid white regime?” asks Professor Mouyyad Hassouna of Valdosta College in Georgia. “Jordan belongs to the Jordanians, South Africa belongs to Black South Africa, and the Palestinians belong to their country, Palestine. . . . Israel is the belligerent occupant of Palestine.”10 Palestine, by the way, stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Professor Hassouna is advocating the complete destruction of the State of Israel.
“[Israel] must stop abusing the rights of Palestinians . . . because they are endangering themselves with the brutal occupation,” advised Professor Nancy Kanwisher of Harvard University at a Harvard/MIT teach-in. “And it is not crazy to think that current Israeli policies are also endangering us here in the US.”11 Did you catch that language? Israel is “endangering” itself—provoking Palestinian bombings. And Israel’s self-defense is “endangering us here in the US.”
At UC Berkeley, Snehal Shingavi caused a national uproar after he began a class, English R1A, entitled “The Poetics of Palestinian Resistance.” The course description originally read: “The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine, [ongoing] since 1948, has systematically displaced, killed, and maimed millions of Palestinian people. And yet, from under the brutal weight of the occupation, Palestinians have produced their own culture and poetry of resistance. This class will examine the history of the [resistance] and the way that it is narrated by Palestinians in order to produce an understanding of the Intifada. . . . This class takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination.
Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections.”12
After criticism began pouring into Berkeley, the university altered the course description—but only by dropping the last line. The rest remained virtually the same.13
Quite even-handed.
“SHARON IS A TERRORIST”
Professorial opponents of Israel often blame the lack of peace between Israelis and Palestinians on one man: Ariel Sharon. They call him a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, and just about every other epithet under the sun. They blame him for a 1982 attack by Christian Phalangists (a Lebanese Christian group persecuted by Yassar Arafat’s terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization) on Sabra and Shatilla, Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. As Israeli defense minister, these Sharon-haters say, Sharon should have known and prevented the attacks (Sabra and Shatilla were hotbeds of terrorist activities, widely considered the home base for global terrorist training). Now, the professors lie, he is continuing “bloody policies” against the Palestinians. They set him up as a foil for the man with true blood on his hands, Yasser Arafat. They ignore that Sharon was elected only after the start of the latest Palestinian Intifada, and that Arafat had negotiated with Yitzchak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ehud Barak before Sharon was even prime minister.
Professor Rashid Khalidi of the University of Chicago compares Ariel Sharon’s elected Likud coalition government with the murderous Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. “Both the extremes, the extremists who rule Israel and the current Israeli government and Hamas believe deeply in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. So we will have more bloodshed,” he averred on Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour.14
Sharon bears “criminal responsibility” for targeting and killing known terrorist leaders, according to Professor Richard Falk of Princeton University. Falk goes even further—he also calls former Labor Prime Minister and knee-jerk appeaser Ehud Barak a war criminal.15 Isn’t there any way to please Professor Falk?
Professor Colin Flint of Penn State plays the moral equivalency game, pretending that Arafat’s record of terrorist activity is comparable to Sharon’s military record. “It’s pretty one-sided to focus on Arafat’s past as a terrorist,” he sniffs, “given Sharon’s alleged involvement in past war crimes.”16 Did he ignore the word “alleged,” or did I miss something?
“There is virtually no likelihood of any progress in the peace process between Israel and Palestine. As long as Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon are in charge, you are not going to see any progress,” declares Professor Donald Snow of the University of Alabama.17
Professor Louis Kriesberg of the University of Syracuse also blames both Sharon and Arafat. “They’re useful enemies for each other,” he states.18 Arafa
t’s been in charge of his constituency for thirty-nine years. Sharon’s been in charge for less than three. In thirty-nine years, there has never been peace. Is the obstacle to peace Sharon or Arafat?
BLAMING ISRAEL FOR SEPTEMBER 11
A whole contingent of professors blames America’s trouble with militant Islam on our support of Israel. Ignoring that Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, they say that Arab rage over “Israeli aggression” caused September 11. Of course, it’s false. Middle Eastern regimes would hate America even if Israel were destroyed. But truth is no obstacle to professorial bias.
“The American public is now waking up to the cost of the relationship with Israel,” stated Professor Yehuda Lukacs of George Mason University after September 11.19 Wrong. September 11 woke Americans up to the cost of a relationship with Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Just hours after September 11, Professor Jim Lea of the University of Southern Mississippi blamed American support of Israel for the attacks. “The US has become to be closely identified with the current regime in Israel, Sharon, and its settlements, and its presence in East Jerusalem, and its use of the military in political assassinations, and in its air attacks,” he expounded.20
Professor James G. Blight of Brown University reasons along similar lines. He blames Israel for the attacks, saying that “the US has never seriously entertained the idea of an equitable settlement in the Middle East,” which stirs Arab anger at the United States.21
At the University of Georgia, Professor Alan Godlas quoted Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist Ramadan Abdullah’s lecture to UGA students in order to explain the causes of September 11. One of the four causes he cited was— you guessed it!—that the US supports depriving Palestinians of their right of self-determination.22 Nothing like swallowing whole the garbage terrorists are selling.