Professor rebukes Hasso
To the Editors:
In a principled action that seems to have attracted little attention at Oberlin,
President Nancy Dye joined several hundred other college and university presidents in signing a
public statement denouncing anti-Zionism and intimidation of Jews on American campuses (New York
Times, October 7, 2002). The statement was unequivocal and uncompromising, and I commend President
Dye for her actions in upholding civility, faithfulness to the historical record and the best traditions
of our College. She and her colleagues were motivated by the alarming increase in campus anti-Semitic
activity, of which Zionism is Racism is but one example. At the General Faculty Meeting
of March 18, President Dye, in allusion to Zionism is Racism expressed her concern
that Jewish students at Oberlin are feeling unwelcome and uncomfortable. The U.N.s rescission
of the Zionism is Racism calumny is very old news, yet it has shamefully reappeared
at Oberlin as vandalism in our buildings and now, as a position legitimated by Frances Hassos
lengthy letter to the Review.
Tendentious in the most obvious ways, Ms. Hassos intervention would not withstand
a finer reading of history. Here, I wish to address only how her position justifying the statement
Zionism is Racism diminishes informed public debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
while encouraging, without intent, Oberlins worst and dumbest to deface our public spaces.
Legitimating the claim that Zionism is Racism depends on a tortured effort to uncouple
Zionism from Judaism, thus enabling the sloganeers to assert that they are not anti-Semitic. We
are not against Jews, they argue, just the Jewish state. Anti-Semitism is thus
sanitized, making a place for itself on the political left and enabling its proponents to find
common cause with the extreme right. Other letter writers have already criticized the political
double standard that deplores the founding of a Jewish state as an effrontery, a thing apart from
other national liberation movements.
One also should ask why, if anti-Zionism is distinct from anti-Semitism, armed police protect every
Jewish institution in Europe? What did diners in Goldenbergs restaurant in Paris have to
do with Zionism when they were cut down in 1982 by a determined terrorist attack against Jews?
What did peaceful Sabbath worshippers in an Istanbul synagogue in 1986 have to do with Zionism
when terrorists slaughtered them? Or, more recently, was the attack against the synagogue last
April on the Tunisian Island of Djerba anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist? What did centuries-old Jewish
communities in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Algeria and Libya do to promote Zionism (the racialized
settler-colonial project) and therefore to suffer persecution and the displacement of more
than a half million Jews from these lands in the 1940s and 50s? Why after the founding of the Zionist
state have Jews in other places found themselves vulnerable to attack? Why is the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, a vicious anti-Semitic forgery, enjoying a publishing revival in the
Middle East? Recently, it was the basis of a popular TV show in Cairo. The Protocols and other
medieval anti-Semitic detritus---favorite sources for the Nazis---are now undergoing a renaissance
in the Middle East. I think the point is abundantly clear. Assertions that anti-Zionism is not
anti-Semitism are preposterous. Let us acknowledge that neither Israelis nor Palestinians will
go away. The prospects for peace and the realization of a two-state solution seem very dim amid
an unending cycle of violence, killing and retaliation, and so it will continue until the strongest
alliance in the Middle East, that between Sharon and Arafat, gives way. Blame abounds on both sides,
and it should be identified. Criticism of Israeli policy is nowhere more overt and heated than
in Israel itself. One can only wish for similar public expressions of internal dissent and disagreement
among all the antagonists. Efforts to delegitimate the Israeli state with assertions that Zionism
is Racism debase the public discourse about this tragedy and embolden rejectionists on both
sides.
Jack Glazier
Professor and Chair,
Department of Anthropology
|