I keep meaning to write about Israel studies programs in American universities, often subsidized by you-know-who. Haven’t gotten around to it, sorry. But here is David Green, a Jewish academic professional in Illinois, of my generation, complaining about such a program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in a letter to the school’s newspaper’s news editor. And note the event Green will be attending next week. Looks exciting.
Ms. Jennifer Wheeler
News editor, Daily Illini
Dear Jennifer,
The Israel Studies Project, administered by the Program for Jewish Culture and Society, invites visitors in residence for two weeks each Fall and Spring.
These visitors are always Jewish Israelis who invariably support or consent to Israel’s, wars, occupation, ethnic cleansing, settlements, etc. Palestinians have had no voice in the ISP, even though 4 million of them live under an Israeli military dictatorship. Neither have Israeli dissidents, nor any other individual from any country or background who may be fairly considered to be an authority on Israel.
I have encouraged the Students for Justice in Palestine to have a presence and response at the upcoming talk by Israeli writer/polemicist Irit Linur at Levis Faculy Center, Tuesday 11/17, at 7:30 p.m.
They have enthusiastically taken this up. We will attend with pointed questions regarding, among things, the appropriateness of an outside group (Jewish Federation of Chicago) funding a program under University auspices that primarily serves to disseminate Israeli propaganda; as well as a guest with a track record of disdain for social justice.
SJP will be meeting to plan their response at Illini Union 404 on Thursday at 5:00. It would be worthwhile if a reporter could come to talk to some of us about our views on this topic. Of course, you might also want to interview the administration of the Program for Jewish Culture and Society, to get their persepctives.
Most important, I hope that you will send a reporter to cover the event on the 17th. There will likely be heated debate, and it’s important for that to be documented.
Two weeks ago, I sent a letter to the DI expressing my views, which was not published–I am fairly certain that your opinions page editor ignores my letters by design. A longer article was published in the Sunday Commentary section of the (CU) News-Gazette on November 1st. I will attach both the letter and the article to this message. I hope that your editorial department will consider publishing one of them prior to the event next Tuesday.
Jeez – they control the media even in Champaign IL!
If Palestinian Israelis were to be considered that would be rationally within the bounds of an Israeli studies program. Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza would not be.
Would you require that a Palestinian studies program include an Israeli? How about a three generation Jewish settler in the West Bank?
Would you require that ONLY a Middle Easterner be allowed to teach Middle Eastern studies? Should European history ONLY be taught by Europeans? Should all foreigners be banned from teaching American history? Should Jews be banned from teaching about World War II German history? That is where your line of reasoning is leading, Richard.
tree,
Only a brainless organism could have derived that “line of reasoning” from Richard’s comment. Using your expressed reasoning, Israel would have to consider all students from all countries for its studies program in America.
I dare Phil and Prof. Green to criticize the “United Negro College Fund” for the same thing it criticizes the Israeli program for.
Well, Richard, you would allow a Jew from the West Bank to be part of the program, but not a Muslim or Christian from the West Bank?
I would imagine you would have no problem including a Jew from Topeka, right?
But of course, he/she has a connection to the land that Palestinians dont.
Here’s a link to the former Chancellor’s statement written during his trip to Israel:
link to projectinterchange.org
You can google Irit Linur.
Here’s my commentary that was published in the local paper:
Israel Studies at the University of Illinois: A Fraud and a Sham
David Green
On a visit to Israel in 2007, former Chancellor Richard Herman expressed his opposition to a boycott of Israeli academics supported by Great Britain’s University and College Union.
Herman stated that “Scholarship and research must remain fluid and borderless, unconstrained by geopolitical boundaries and ideological disagreements.…
We … value our deep and meaningful connections with all nations, including Israel. Our Israel Studies Program brings Israeli academics to campus, along with journalists and writers. The program promotes and supports the academic study of Jewish culture and society in the spirit of free and open inquiry.”
Referring to the British boycott, Herman concluded: “The irony is hardly lost on me.”
Indeed there is much irony not to be lost in considering the Israel Studies Program on our campus, sponsored by the Program for Jewish Culture and Society, in the light of alleged free and open inquiry.
The ISP is funded by Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. Given these financial strings, its “spirit of free and open inquiry” has in practice been severely limited. It has invited only Israeli Jews, excluding Palestinian citizens of Israel on the basis of their religion. Invitees never seriously dissent from Israeli government policies, as do many uninvited but distinguished Israeli Jewish critics of their own government. The function of Israel Studies on our campus can be briefly summarized: The promotion of Israeli government policies and the sanitization of Israeli culture.
Fittingly in regard to both of these functions, Israeli writer Irit Linur will speak on campus on “Making TV Drama in Israel” on November 17th. In 2002, Linur used her radio program to call for a boycott of Israel’s Ha’aretz (liberal) newspaper “until it fires (dissident) journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy.” Hass and Levy are the most courageous and incisive Jewish Israeli journalistic critics of Israel’s policies, and it is therefore inconceivable that either would receive an invitation from the Israel Studies Program, as has boycott-proposing Ms. Linur.
The irony continues. Earlier this year, after the organization “Breaking the Silence” published soldier testimonies about IDF conduct in Gaza, Linur said on her show, “They’re garbage. It’s not worth wasting punches on weaklings and cowards like “Breaking the Silence.”
The Israeli Director of the (liberal) New Israel Fund responded: “Irit Linur is a dangerous person. She behaves on her program like a quick-thinking intellectual to give the impression of intellectual integrity. She gives violence an aesthetic wrapping.”
The invitation extended to Ms. Linur does not exhaust the irony. An October 21, 2009 news-release from Gisha, the Palestinian Legal Center for the Freedom of Movement, was headlined “As the Academic Year Opens in Israel: 838 Students Still Trying to Leave Gaza for Study Abroad.”
In an October 25th story titled “The ‘guardians’ of Israeli academia,” Ha’aretz reported:
“Israeli academics are being watched. Vigilantes check what they say or write – and, if they are judged ‘anti-Israel,’ incite donors to the universities and colleges where they teach to act against them. Students are encouraged to spy on their teachers and to report what they say. Academics on the left are the targets. They are vilified as ‘Israel’s academic fifth column’ and ‘our inner scourge.’ They are called ‘traitors’ and are accused of ‘treasonous betrayal’ and of wanting ‘to suck up to and be accepted by the enemy.’”
With this invitation, the Israel Studies Program continues its tradition of rich irony, as well as that of being a fraud and a sham in relation to its academic and scholarly mission of “free and open inquiry.”
David Green lives in Champaign.
These guardians are at work in American Universities as well.