Last week we reported on a disgraceful 3-day conference at Yale that described criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. Today Maen Rashid Areikat, the PLO Representative to the United States, sent a letter to Yale President Richard C. Levin, objecting to the conference. It follows:
August 30, 2010
Dear President Levin,
I write to express my deep dismay over the contents of a recent conference held at Yale entitled “Global Anti-Semitism: A Crisis of Modernity".
The conference, which was organized in cooperation with the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), opened with a speech from an official from the Israeli embassy and featured seminars such as "The Central Role of Palestinian Antisemitism in Creating the Palestinian Identity", "The Jihad Flotilla to Gaza: Provocative – Antisemitic – Not Humanitarian”, and "Lawfare, Human Rights Organizations and the Demonization of Israel".
Amongst the "experts" leading these seminars were retired Israeli army officer Jonathan Fighel, Anne Herzberg of NGO Monitor (whose mission is to suppress criticism of Israel by undermining the credibility of human rights organizations), and an Israeli settler named Itamar Marcus.
In addition to being the head of a shady propaganda outfit known as "Palestinian Media Watch", Mr. Marcus also lives in the West Bank colony of Efrat in violation of international law. Mr. Marcus - who, as a settler, has a vested interest in preventing the realization of the two-state solution - has spent much of his life attempting to "prove" that Palestinians are unwilling or unable to make peace, thereby justifying Israel's continued military occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands. Mr. Marcus is also closely tied to an organization known as the Central Fund of Israel, which funds some of the most extreme and violent elements of Israel's settler movement.
It's shocking that a respected institution like Yale would give a platform to these right-wing extremists and their odious views, and it is deeply ironic that a conference on antisemitism that is ostensibly intended to combat hatred and discrimination against Semites would demonize Arabs - who are Semites themselves.
As Palestinians, we strongly support principles of academic freedom and free speech, however racist propaganda masquerading as scholarship does not fall into this category.
I urge you to publicly dissociate yourself and Yale University from the anti-Arab extremism and hate mongering that were on display during this conference.
Sincerely,
Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat
PLO Representative to the United States
i went to hear him interviewed @ the world affairs council in sf last fall. he definitely held his own against loaded questions. i was impressed.
Well, it’s about time that the PLO started protesting crap like this!
Areikat, by pointing his finger and discrediting Marcus is doing what those congregants did at Yale and it was too little and too late. Part of the Yale Initiative mission statement is focused on “… that Antisemitism has taken on new complex and changing forms that need to be decoded, mapped and critiqued.” The whole Yale Initiative is a bogus exercise about nipping any criticism of Israel in the bud and the “Antisemitic” label is an easy one with which to spook the guilt-ridden consciences of Americans.
This is all that these Antisemitic jamborees do all the time. They point fingers at who is doing the hating, how the hating is being manifested, and what must be done to put a stop this hating. What is NEVER done is to discuss why the hating is there and what must be done to prevent it. Nobody can deny that there has always been anti-Jewish hatred but nobody appears interested in finding out why or if any of this hate is justified. So why is there such hatred for Jews? I have no such hate and in fact feel that as an Arab, Jews are closer to what I’m about than any other ethnic group. But I have no such empathy with Zionists that have blurred the lines between Judaism and Zionism and are blurring them today even more between criticism of Israel and Antisemitism. The study of Antisemitism, such as the one held at Yale, has become like most of Zionism, a political cult thing; nothing is really being studied there other than new techniques on silencing Israel’s critics.
Areikat & Company should stop messing around amateurishly with the big guys with after-the-fact letters and hire a top notch NYC Jewish PR firm to give them the desperately needed professional coaching.
Walid – the entire point of “antisemitism” is that expressions of hate directed at Jews is not allowed regardless of the reason or justification. Jews are exempt from criticism. Criticism of Jews is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust. No matter what Jews Do, no matter what crimes they commit, no matter how much suffering they cause, the fault lies with their victims.
(Unless, of course, their victims are Jews, in which case the Madoff Exception applies.)
To Mondoweiss:
Good job of reporting on this racist conference. Just imagine if the ME department of a major university (I know this is far fetched) had a conference on anti Muslim movements around the world, and one of the topics was the role of Israel in such movements. There would be an uproar from the ADL and op eds in all the major newspapers ….not to mention the countless rightwing bloggers (Geller, Glick, etc..)
Levin must have had a chuckle at the letter, knowing the Palestinians have absolutely no power in domestic US politics and fund raising for pet people and projects.
>> Well, it’s about time that the PLO started protesting crap like this!
Agreed. But what baffles me is why, in the first place, the Yale conference failed to “humanize ‘the Other’”, make “better wheels” and avoid maximalism and destabilization.
Oh, right, it’s probably because that task falls on the shoulders of Palestinians and their supporters and, anyway, that conference was just a rock in the stream that the Palestinians should paddle around.
Satire has been a lost art. Thanks for single-handedly reviving it ;)
Well said, Maen. It is astonishing, if not surprising, that almost any Israeli propagandist, self-styled ‘expert’ or settler can turn up in the US and be given a platform, as if their views are in any way representative or important. Apparently these people’s credentials or motives are never examined, whereas of course, any Palestinian, Arab or Muslim speaker is subject to rafts of innuendo, smearing or just patronising put downs. Even when the quality of what they have to say, as here, far exceeds the pathetic apologists for an occupying junta that Yale seems to consider worthy of a conference. It is not remotely academic, just another exercise in self-justification, propaganda and hate speech.
Another development in tandem is that there is no consequence for spying in the US for Israel–in direct contrast for example, to what happened to those very low level Russian spies of recent note: link to intifada-palestine.com
You know, what really disgusts me about what the corruption of AIPAC and its cohorts have wrought on the US government: the same excuse that is used to deny Muslim prisoners access to sensitive information that would exonerate them — “putting this info on court records would compromise national security” — is used to exonerate people who sell out to Israeli spies.
I don’t really understand the hub-bub about this conference at Yale. What kind of “conferences” would you expect? I recently saw a stat that said Ivy league campuses have white populations that are close to 50% Jewish ; doesn’t it stand to reason that some of those kids have zionist parents and some of those parents would have the means/willingness to bring a conference like this to Yale? I think its high time the recruitment of “elites” towards the opinions expressed here stops. The contemporary defintion of “elite” has come to mean submission to power, a complete lack of integrity and a total unwillingness to rock the boat. I am still unable to tell if the anger towards this conference is directed toward it’s content or the fact that Yale – a near mythical symbol for American elitism- had the audacity to let the conference go forward. Its as if the conference attacks its opponents own sense of elitism, the comments here are purely cathartic.
The point is that Yale has credibility and weight. The name of Yale serves to validate any conclusions reached. And if you should point out the stat about the percentage of Jewish students, your obvious antisemitism would invalidate anything you say.
Potsherd-
Your not calling me anti-semitic are you? You meant, if someone was to point out the stats they would be labeled that way? I hope thats what you meant. In any event, your absolutely right, Yale does carry “weight”- my point is that “who” it carries weight with are so captured in their own self-interest/career advancement/social-climbing that more and more so, they are irrelevant to what is discussed here. I think it is easier to view places like Yale etc as bastions for detached, nepotistic elistism ( which they are, for the most part) than to wage some sort of campaign to “save Yale” from these sorts of things. This conference exists because of places like Yale; if anything, Kudos to Yale for unveiling its true purpose- to serve power.
The rebranding and diversion campaign expands