This is amazing. The Forward did what a newspaper is supposed to do and sent a reporter to Swarthmore to find out what’s going on there, and surprise, the Swarthmore Hillel board’s decision to adopt guidelines that would include anti-Zionist speakers has fostered a spike in attendance at the chapter. Hody Nemes reports that young Jews are not afraid of ideas!
“Hillel is attracting significant new Jewish membership as a result of this resolution,” said [Hanna] Kipnis-King…
“Swarthmore has a definite and distinct community of very, very progressive Jews,” [Jacob] Adenbaum said. “A lot of these people weren’t interested in being part of Hillel because of the fact that they didn’t feel their political views were welcome.”
The board’s decision has succeeded in pulling many of these left-wing students back toward Hillel. “We’ve had students who lean more toward the left who are coming out of the woodwork” since the decision, [Josh] Wolfsun said.
I keep telling Hillel to invite Max Blumenthal and Susan Abulhawa, but the Forward says that Hillel won’t be inviting anyone for a few weeks at least:
A delegation of Swarthmore students met with Hillel of Greater Philadelphia on December 16 to discuss the controversy, Adenbaum said. He was tight-lipped about the meeting’s outcome. “They seem to be really interested in dialogue,” he said. “I’m hopeful about the future.”
At the moment, Swarthmore Hillel has no concrete plans to invite anti-Israel speakers in violation of Hillel International’s guidelines. But that could change in the coming semester.
Meanwhile, insisting on the right of young Jews to be stupid, Tablet magazine runs a piece by Matti Friedman saying that Swarthmore Hillel should not be allowed to invite speakers who don’t support the Jewish state:
Does the principle of freedom of speech require Jewish people to host debate about the destruction of the world’s largest Jewish community?
He urges the censorship of anti-Zionism because it’s, well, genocidal. This is crazy:
“Anti-Zionism” is not a theoretical position, and Zionism is not a morality play. Israel is a real country full of real people, most of whom have nowhere else to go. Anti-Zionism in 2013 is the belief that this country should not exist – that it should, in some way, be made not to exist. It means that more than 6 million Jews who have found a refuge and a home here will have that home taken away, that a century of Hebrew culture will end, and that the entire Jewish people will go back to living by the whims of Muslim and Christian majorities.
Friedman concludes, “Hillel Houses exist to provide a safe intellectual space for young Jews on campus.”
I have no idea what that means– a space for ignorance?
Philip you are an Anti Zionist on moral and practical grounds as far as i can understand so i would like you to answer me honestly a
question similar to one you like to ask young Israelis (you know the one).
Do you believe that the State of Israel can be transformed without bloodshed into that egalitarian eutopia the BDS types like Frank Barat talk about.
Will you be willing to bet your life on it , your wife’s life , perhaps one of your close friends ?
Because you sure as hell seem to willing to bet my and my families and my friends lives on it.
doesn’t tablet have some responsibility to fact check. this is not the definition of anti zionism.
@- Oleg
A transition to equity under the law, whether or not it’s a peaceful transition, is the best hope Palestinians and Jews have for a better, long term future. To equate this transition with the destruction of the Jewish State is false. It should be read as a profound and lasting improvement on the dead end, unjust status quo.
Tablet magazine Matti Friedman “But their goal is to destroy the state of Israel, and they are generally willing to tell you that if you are listening.”
A failure to quote those accused doesn’t make a very good argument
Anti Zionism does not mean the destruction of Israel as a state/polity. It means the destruction of the system of PRIVILEGE within that polity that grants one people all the rights and power and deprives another people living within its borders of same. A good starting point would be these simple and well-known words:
In the case of Israel, it is an even more grave injustice that needs to be remedied, insofar as Israel confers this privilege on people living all over the world who claim to be Jewish by religion and strips this privilege from those who happen not to be Jewish but were born and raised within its ambiguously defined borders.
Therefore, anti-Zionism means the destruction of a form of government that is by definition profoundly and unequivocably unjust, and its replacement with one that restores justice to the land of historic Palestine.