Shany Mor wants you to know that the American Jewish community is wide open to critics of Israel.
In The New Republic, the former Israeli National Security Council official has penned a long, meandering critique of Peter Beinart’s latest New York Review of Books essay. What has troubled Mor is Beinart’s contention that American Jews live in an intellectual “cocoon” that does not speak to Palestinians. On the contrary, Mor argues that Jews in the U.S. have a “robust and diverse and self-critical intellectual space” that “manifests” itself strongly on Israel.
Trouble is, anyone searching for examples of how the organized Jewish community shuts down dissent on Israel doesn’t need to look far at all. (There are indeed plenty of Jews who do not adhere to the “cocoon” Beinart wrote about, but they exist outside the Jewish establishment Mor is writing about.)
The piece Beinart wrote points to Hillel guidelines that advise against chapters hosting speakers who “deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders,” “delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel,” or “support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the State of Israel.” Mor brushes the guidelines off:
[Beinart’s] third objection is that an Arab member of Knesset who even “presides over sessions of the Knesset” wants to remove Israel’s Jewish identity, and therefore he might not be allowed to speak at a Hillel function. Can anyone imagine a member of Knesset being turned away from a Hillel? Has this happened? All Beinart has done is present Hillel’s entirely reasonable sounding guidelines, mock them as vague where they are deliberately anodyne, and then proceed to give them the most uncharitable and radical interpretation possible.
Mor ignores a very recent example of “a member of Knesset being turned away from a Hillel.” And this (former) Knesset member was not even Arab–he was an Israeli Jew who used to be the speaker of the Knesset. In November, Avraham Burg was barred from speaking in a Hillel space at Harvard, his crime apparently being advocacy of a single state with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians. As Ann Finkel, a Harvard student, put it, “this is an attack on free speech in its most naked form.”
Another recent example of Hillel clamping down on critics of Israel occurred at Binghamton University. In December 2012, a student was ousted from the Hillel board because he brought a pro-BDS Palestinian filmmaker, Iyad Burnat, to speak at a different campus organization.
The list of examples of the “American Jewish cocoon” is exhaustive. There was the Jewish community mobilizing to shut down a Palestinian children’s art exhibit in San Francisco in 2011; the cancellation of a talk on Israeli democracy at an Upper West Side synagogue; the tossing out of young Jewish Voice for Peace activists from the Jewish Federation’s TribeFest; and so on.
Sounds like the organized Jewish community has a problem: the lack of a “robust and diverse and self-critical intellectual space.” Mor should take note.
I get it!
Let’s have the Jewish Establishment suppress free speech of Jews but CLAIM that all opinions will be heard in any space managed by Jewish Establishment organizations, such as Hillel.
Yeah, right!
Do you think Mondoweiss has a robust and diverse and self-critical intellectual space?
“Mor argues that Jews in the U.S. have a “robust and diverse and self-critical intellectual space” that “manifests” itself strongly on Israel.
Trouble is, anyone searching for examples of how the organized Jewish community shuts down dissent on Israel don’t need to look far at all.”
But isn’t it the half-full glass view that organized Jewish community (a.k.a. The Lobby) has dissent to shut down?
The side-view is that on the list of hasbara arguments is “Israel (Jews) has such dissenting intellectuals and Palestinians (Arabs) do not”. Which is sad, because there are Zionist friendly Arab and Palestinian intellectuals who are not only reviled by their compatriots but also thoroughly ignored by the Zionists because they do not fit to that argument. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how this argument (we have dissenters and they do not) is used. As with many arguments, it works best if you do not think too much about it.
The basic meaning is “we Jews are intellectually superior in all kinds of intellectual activity, even so absurd like criticizing Israel. Even our weirdoes are good at what they do.” If this argument is used in “hasbara piano” then the train of arguments smoothly departs elsewhere.
But “hasbara forte” dwells more on that point, complaining bitterly about the world-wide conspiracy of radical leftists and Islamists united in their join hatred of everything that is good and decent, like Democracy, Western Values, Israel, with some special attention to Jewish conspirators who are “Jew washers”, kapos, “the likes of Hanna Arendt and Stella Kübler” etc.
The siege mentality of Israel has reached American Jewish shores. Things as innocent as a theatre play can now be banned instantly, even if it is a Jewish theater, by right-wing donors reach with their long arm into the communal space.
I’ve increasingly come to believe that the debate will not be settled within, but outside the Jewish community. So far, the most important book on any of this has been the Israel lobby, because it enabled a frank discussion about the sociological implications of American power, fused with ethnic politics which stands at the center of this debate.
But as importing the American context is, fundamentally, the knowledge about the true nature of Israel must also be revealed. And here the Jewish community cannot really help. Max Blumenthal is an outsider to this right-wing elite concensus, so it’s not like a Jew can’t write what needs to be written. But forget about being in a position like Beinart, who had the most influential secular rabbi in America, rabbi Wolpe, essentially call his grandmother a self-hating Jew and heavily imply he was one, too. And the “crisis of Zionism” is really quite meek compared to what is really going on in Israel.
From where I stand, it seems like the main posture of the Jewish establishment seems to be to settling on a tactic to destroy all critics. That hasn’t really helped that much.
The next step has been to silence everything within the community that isn’t the standard line. And what about the grassroots? Basically try to co-opt campus leaders by offering them free trip to Israel. That hasn’t helped.
So what’s next? Maybe try to engage with the debate.
Or leave it to us.
”Mor argues that Jews in the U.S. have a “robust and diverse and self-critical intellectual space”>>>>
Which Jews? Jews-Jews or Zionist Jews or Lib Jews or anti Zionist Jews?
I’m not seeing a ‘vast’ intellectual space created by the whole.
I’m seeing various groups and individuals.
Jews-Jews like JVP and some others have some intellectual space.
MW has some intellectual space.
Some ‘individual’ Jews have created intellectual space.
But zionist and lib zionist?…I dont see any real intellectual space there. They have their own set of 10 commandments that cant be questioned.