Editor’s Note: The following open letter to the Columbia administration was written in response to the “Deans’ Message on Columbia and Community” signed by the deans of 18 schools within Columbia University.
Our deans state that the Columbia community should acknowledge “that hearing chanted phrases such as ‘by any means necessary,’ ‘from the river to the sea,’ or calls for an ‘intifada’—irrespective of intentions and provenance—is experienced by many Jewish, Israeli, and other members of our community as antisemitic and deeply hurtful.”
They have thus unilaterally decided that no one should rise up [the actual meaning
of “intifada”] against 56 years of illegal military occupation; that Palestine should remain unfree from the river to the sea; and that the oppressed should take permission from the oppressor as to the means to relieve their oppression. They have come to this decision because hearing otherwise is “antisemitic and deeply hurtful” to some. In determining what speech is permissible and what is not, they have in effect banned the political, while acknowledging the humanitarian, such that expressing “anguish about the loss of Palestinian lives” does not make one antisemitic or a supporter of terrorism (which mouthing other words presumably does). There is no equivalence whatsoever between these two acknowledgements.
This statement amounts to a new norm that prohibits using or learning about these
terms and their histories, in favor of the privileging of a politics of feeling. While perhaps appropriate to a kindergarten, it is hard to imagine an approach more contrary to the most basic idea of a university.
This statement is characteristic of a university that picks a task force nearly devoid
of expertise on antisemitism and on Palestine/Israel (much of which exists among the faculty), but packed with outspoken advocates for Israel, a university that has decided that faculty expertise on freedom of speech or on language to be proscribed should be rigorously excluded from deliberations on such issues. With complete disregard for the principle of faculty governance, crucial matters like these are being decided upon by administrators, presumably with hefty input from trustees, donors and politicians, who have negligible expertise, but robust and one-sided opinions.
This is the latest instance of Columbia’s discrimination against Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and other students who support Palestinian rights, ignoring the grave material consequences they face within the university, and from a hostile political, media and corporate environment, for protesting an assault that has so far killed over 20,000 and wounded 50,000, the heaviest such toll in Palestinian history. Such a statement would have no place in a self-respecting university that cherishes and protects academic freedom and freedom of speech in the face of pressures from powerful outside interests.
Rashid Khalidi had this editorial in the LA Times earlier this month ( delete LA Times cookies for access ):
Opinion: How the U.S. has fueled Israel’s decades-long war on Palestinians…The skewed numbers of those killed in and around the Gaza Strip so far — around 1,200 Israelis and 15,000 Palestinians — in the latest phase of a more than century-long conflict point to the enormous disparity between these two sides….These numbers are characteristic of colonial wars, one of many facts often obscured by the media, as are the nature and origins of this war. This is not simply a straightforward struggle between two sovereign peoples, such as France and Germany. Instead, this is the last colonial war in the modern age, fought to establish the hegemony and the absolute rights of one people over the other, as expressed in the 2018 “Nation State of the Jewish People” law, which states that the right to national self-determination in Palestine “is unique to the Jewish People.”…Whoever the settlers were and wherever they came from, with whatever connections to the land, the resistance to them would have been essentially the same as that of the Irish, Algerians, Native Americans, Zulus or Libyans to intruders bent on expelling them and taking the land. Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Revisionist Zionism that produced the Likud Party, stated bluntly: “Every native population in the world resists colonists.” And as Edward Said noted, it was the particular misfortune of the Palestinians to be the victims of victims….This process of settler colonialism produced the dispossession of a large part of Palestine’s native population and the theft of their lands and property. This was achieved through the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians during Israel’s establishment in 1948 (over 55% of the total Arab population of Palestine at the time), and of over 250,000 in 1967, with none of them allowed to return….
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-12-02/israel-gaza-palestinian-american-history
It seems these Universities, the Biden Administration, members of Congress, and the media, conveniently ignores, or pretends to be unaware of, the fact that many Israeli LEADERS have called for genocide, and the destruction of Gaza. These are not students, but top leaders in the apartheid nation.
“‘Parts of Gaza sent back to Stone Age’: Gantz videos laud his IDF bona fides
Calling for the Palestinian towns to be erased.
“Israeli minister’s call to ‘erase’ Palestinian village an incitement to violence, US says”
Calling for Palestinians to be put into concentration camps.
“An Israeli official has called for concentration camps in Gaza and ‘the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters’.
Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, posted the inflammatory message on his Facebook page at the weekend. ”
And most recently calling for Gaza to be NUKED.
Nuking Gaza a possibility’: Israeli minister
No OUTRAGE or condemnation from the ADL, AIPAC, the US Government, or the media.
No calls for these racist bloodthirsty zionists to resign.
But look over there at the students in the American universities….
What makes absolutely no sense is that the leaders of an American University are so beholding to Israel and their politics. Phrases such as “From the River to the Sea” and others are simply a calling for equal rights for all peoples living in Palestine or Israel. Why is that harmful to students or anyone else in the United States. It stands for everything we believe in and freedom for all. We should be more outraged by the Jewish Nation State law which goes against all the principles we hold dear to our hearts. Why do not these same people denounce the apartheid government and the slaughter of innocent Palestinians, women and children in Gaza today. These deans and everyone else needs to learn some history as stated by bcg on this site.
While no one can agree with what Hamas has done but people should at least learn why. At least in the minimum this whole slaughter is bringing attention to the situation. Palestinians are looked at as human animals and Israeli’s as a superior group. Sound familiar? Negotiations are non existent with Israel and the support for a two state solution is as well. One state is out of the question because of demographics for them. So what is left? Apartheid and the status quo, or getting rid of all the Palestinians or enough of them to assure a Jewish majority. I think a continuous dispossession is their plan, and the US goes right along with it. Tell people the truth. We only hear one side in this country. The US did this years ago to the Native Americans. People should not be colonizing today. We should have learned something from the past.
And in Britain, activist Tony Greenstein was actually arrested. For a tweet. So much for freedom of speech.
It has never mattered to Zionist Jews what “frightens” the rest of us. It is past time to return the favor and tell them in all candor that their fears are not our problem. No one can respond to “fears” as inchoate and opportunistic as theirs. We can’t be held responsible for their ignorance, dishonesty, and cowardice.
When I taught political philosophy at Al Quds University, my final exam assignment was to have students design an intifada. You don’t like it? That’s a “you” problem—and from my perspective, a “fuck you” problem. We don’t exist as raw material for ethnic cleansing. If you’re afraid of an intifada, back off. If you won’t, fuck off. But the combination of whining and threats has gotten old.
I’m an involuntarily unemployed academic. I’d love a job in academia. But I don’t care whether prospective employers see this comment. I’d rather starve than bow to the pathetic, genocidal manipulations of anyone who’s target me for them. The most important part of me, my capacity for moral agency, will always survive whatever they do. The same part of them is already dead.
Props to Khalidi.