The following [brilliant] letter appeared in the September 18, 2009 edition of The Oberlin Review:
Oberlin Zionists’ Speaker Raises Questions of Racism
To the Editors:
Suppose that a patriotic pro-America group on campus invites a historian to Oberlin whose specialty is the genocide of the Native Americans. This historian accepts that such a genocide took place, duly acknowledges that it was a tragedy… and then goes on to say that it was a kind of noble evil vindicated by the foundation of American Democracy. Suppose further that this speaker is brought to the campus to advocate solutions to contemporary issues that are the fallout from that genocide, such as reparations or reservation rights.
No group will ever do this, obviously, because a person like that would have precisely zero moral credibility on those issues. So the next best thing would be to go see Israeli historian Benny Morris speak in King 106 next Wednesday at 4:30, when the Oberlin Zionists will have him discuss the one and two state solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Benny Morris may be the most prominent member of the “New Historians,” a generation of Israeli academics who refuted the founding myth that Israel was created on “a land without a people” and argued that about 700,000 native Palestinians were driven from their homes at Israel’s founding. Morris, to his credit, is unequivocal about this: he states in a Ha’aretz interview that, “That can’t be chance. It’s a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads.”
Yet in the same interview, he says, “in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” And “even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history."
He goes on in the interview to claim that the early Zionists didn’t go far enough in their transfer program and argues for keeping ethnic cleansing on reserve as a potential solution to the Arab problem. And the Palestinians’ failure to disappear as per their historical role sends him into high ubermensch mode: “The Arab world as it is today is barbarian"; “that society is in the state of being a serial killer”; “something like a cage has to be built for them”; “there is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another.”
This doesn’t require a thorough historical background in the Israel-Palestine conflict to understand. These statements are manifestly racist, if the word is to have any meaning at all. And the Oberlin Zionists are hosting the man who said them, because he’s on their side.
That’s not to say that Benny Morris has nothing to say. He is a truly accomplished historian. Still, it’s instructive to imagine what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot. Namely: what would be the response if Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine brought a speaker who argued that suicide bombings in marketplaces were ethically justified as a means of creating a Palestinian state?
That the Oberlin Zionists can bring such a speaker virtually without protest while the reverse scenario is unimaginable is the only proof necessary of the pro-Israel bias that exists in Oberlin as well as in America. And it mocks the possibility of dialogue between Israel and Palestine solidarity groups that many Oberlin students have been hoping for. Would African-Americans and their allies dialogue with a historian who justifies slavery for building the American south? No? Than why would Arabs reach out to a man who regrets their ethnic cleansing only for not going far enough? There are other prominent Israeli advocates for the two state solution, such as Neve Gordon. Though articulate, Morris is rendered unnecessary for being so ethically compromised.
Still, Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine is willing to talk with a man who refers to an entire ethnic group as “wild animals,” “serial killers,” and “barbarians” in the space of a single interview, painstakingly documents their ethnic cleansing only to argue that it was their own fault, then steals the moral high ground by claiming that he’s sorry about it anyway. But to paraphrase Hunter Thompson: how long will it be before the “politically correct types” on campus start calling him a racist? How would Morris react? “No comment”? And how would Oberlin react if he just came right out and admitted it?
Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine
(PS: Read a longer version of this letter on our website.)
