This is a crazy story. Jeff Halper, the brave leader of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, was touring the U.S. last week, and two student groups at Temple U in Philadelphia invited him to speak: the moderate pro-Israel group All Sides and Students for Justice in Palestine.
Naturally, the students thought of having the event at the Hillel. Elliot Ratzman, a teacher of secular Jewish studies at Temple, suggested that the student groups approach the (lobby group) Students for Israel to co-sponsor and they’d have a "respondent" to Halper. Maybe Daniel Pipes or Jonathan Schanzer. A regular hootenanny. But Ratzman says that the pro-Israel group declined to get involved.
And then the Hillel refused to host the event. Halper came anyway. He spoke in a classroom about how the occupation and the colonies are destroying the two-state solution.
Well on Wednesday night, guess who Temple U. Hillel is hosting? Effie Eitam, a former colonist of Gaza and member of the Knesset who has called for the expulsion of Palestinians from the Jewish state. Temple Students for Israel and the Jewish National Fund are hosting.
Eitam was at Harvard earlier this week. “I think that it’s disturbing that someone who advocates so openly very racist policies is asked to speak here,” [student Abdelnasser] Rashid told the Harvard newspaper.
Elliot Ratzman was angered by the Halper refusal. He says that Rabbi Howard Alpert, the head of Hillel of Greater Philadelphia, told him that Halper crossed the red line for him on an appropriate speaker. And what was the standard for such speakers? Ratzman asked. Well as a minimum, Ahavat Yisroel. Love of the Jewish people. (By the same standard did Gershom Scholem pox Hannah Arendt; she said, I love my friends, I don’t love a people.)
"Eitam’s talk was pitched as being about ‘Jewish ethics,’" Ratzman says. "I suppose if by ‘ethics’ one means advocating the expulsion of Israeli Arabs, resisting the Gaza withdraw, and insisting that the West Bank belongs to the Jews, then there you go.
"Of course there will be no respondent for Eitam. He is being brought around campuses (he will be in Ithaca tomorrow nite at the Moosewood cafe) by the JNF – their ‘Caravan for Democracy’ series.
"Eitam is a foul choice to represent Jewish democracy. He is a theocrat who advocates an explicit ethnocracy, someone who has tried to delegitimize his fellow (Arab) citizens. He is a leader of the settler movement, and should not be allowed in any Hillels.
"For years I’ve been counsellng activists to NOT see Hillels as targets of anti-occupation demonstrations. As of this week, I will no longer counsel such restraint; Hillels that deny peace activists a forum but allow militant ethnocrats a forum should be considered politically partisan institutions, appropriate targets for demonstrations."
There’s likely to be a demo there Wednesday night. Thanks to Hannah Schwarzschild for the headsup.
