Columbia University Professors Sign Petition in Support of BDS

[Little Tich]

Source: Haaretz

Forty faculty members from prestigious institution sign document urging divestment from companies related to Israel.

Forty Columbia University faculty members have signed a petition urging the New York school to divest from companies that “supply, perpetuate, and profit from a system that has subjugated the Palestinian people.”

The petition was released Monday morning to mark the first day of Israel Apartheid Week, the Columbia Spectator reported.

According to the petition, the signatories “stand with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine as well as with Jewish Voice for Peace in calling upon the University to take a moral stance against Israel’s violence in all its forms.”

They include Rashid Khalidi, a history and Middle Eastern studies professor who is a longtime critic of Israel and supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history who sees Zionism as a racist and colonialist movement, and Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropology professor who received tenure in 2007 following a heated battle over the merits of her work, particularly a book that accuses Israel of manipulating archaeological findings to legitimize its existence.

Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.706529

[aranthus]

1. It's Columbia. What do you expect?

One of the most anti-Israel and antisemitic faculltys in academia. Big surprise. At least the two professors noted aren'T just critics of Israeli government policy. They reject the legitimacy of Israel's existence. Their antisemitism is what BDS is all about. Of course they support it.

[Little Tich]

2. When I accuse people of being racists, I have to be prepared to back it up.

If I wouldn't be able to back up my accusations, I would have to take them back.

I looked up Nadia Abu El-Haj, Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad, but I found no signs whatsoever of anti-Semitism, not with them or the circumstances around the petition. If no evidence to support your position turns up, I must conclude that you made the accusations up.

[aranthus]

3. You have a unique inability to see antisemitism,

while at the same time seeing the evil of the Jewish state.

[Little Tich]

4. Ah, so my inability to see anti-Semitism anywhere prevents you from coming up with any kind of

evidence that would prove your point. How convenient...

[shira]

5. Columbia's Joe Massad, holocaust revisionist, says "good" Jews wiped out by "bad" Zionist....

....Jews colluding with Nazis, comparing Zionism to Naziism. Says Jewishness of most Jews today is colonial and criminal.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/2013521184814703958.html

[Little Tich]

7. For me, an anti-Semite is a person who harbors feelings of antipathy towards Jews,

and it doesn't seem as if Joseph Massad fits that description. Merely referring to the ideas of Herzl and Zionism as having anti-Semitic elements isn't enough, especially as there is a grain of truth in that. Here's a quote from Herzl, taken slightly out of context, judge for your self:

The Jewish State / Der Judenstaat, by Theodor Herzl, 1896 (p5)

"The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized--for instance, France--until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of Anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America."

Source: http://www.mercazusa.org/pdf/The-Jewish-State.pdf

What about "Jews colluding with nazis" then? Well, it obviously happened, but I personally see no reason to draw any conclusions about it's political significance:

Haavara Agreement
Source: Wikipedia

The Haavara Agreement (Hebrew: הסכם העברה Translit.: heskem haavara Translated: "transfer agreement&quot was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Zionist German Jews signed on 25 August 1933. The agreement was finalized after three months of talks by the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank (under the directive of the Jewish Agency) and the economic authorities of Nazi Germany. The agreement was designed to help facilitate the emigration of German Jews to Palestine. While it helped Jews emigrate, it forced them to temporarily give up possessions to Germany before departing. Those possessions could later be re-obtained by transferring them to Palestine as German export goods.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement

While I think Joseph Massad is simplifying historical events, and I don't agree with his thesis that Zionism is an anti-Semitic ideology: "Israel's claim that its critics must be anti-Semites presupposes that its critics believe its claims that it represents "the Jewish people". But it is Israel's claims that it represents and speaks for all Jews that are the most anti-Semitic claims of all.&quot http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/2013521184814703958.html), I really can't find any evidence of him being an anti-Semite at all.

Israel and Zionism aren't "the Jews", and criticism of Israel and Zionism isn't anti-Semitism. At least that's what I believe.

[shira]

9. Oh, Bullshit. That Massad column is Stormfront gutter garbage....

Holocaust revisionism, denial - Jews responsible for the Holocaust. Typical White Supremacist, racist filth.

And you're defending it.

If you actually read a few of Massad's columns, it's clear he lifts material from David Duke's book, "My Awakening":
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/05/03/stormfront-material-from-columbia-university-professor-joseph-massad/massad-stormfront-dduke/

Same arguments. That's what Holocaust deniers & revisionists do every day 24-7-365 and it's what Massad does.

Anti-racists don't defend that kind of trash.

[Little Tich]

17. Massad's argument isn't the same as David Duke's.

Massad is arguing that Zionism is an anti-Semitic ideology, and he uses a somewhat simplified version of history to support that argument. The target of his criticism isn't "the Jews" but rather elements of a nationalist ideology, and while I disagree with Massad (I can't see the point in using historical anecdotes to show what the current tenets of an ideology are), I don't see his argumentation as being anti-Semitic. Nationalistic ideologies are criticized all the time without it being racist, and the rest of Massad's argumentation (at least in the Al Jazeera article and other stuff I've skimmed through) shows clearly that he's targeting the Zionist ideology, not its adherents.

From the Al Jazeera article:

"Thus when Herzl began to meet in 1903 with infamous anti-Semites like the Russian minister of the interior Vyacheslav von Plehve, who oversaw anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia, it was an alliance that he sought by design. That it would be the anti-Semitic Lord Balfour, who as Prime Minister of Britain in 1905 oversaw his government's Aliens Act, which prevented East European Jews fleeing Russian pogroms from entering Britain in order, as he put it, to save the country from the "undoubted evils" of "an immigration which was largely Jewish", was hardy coincidental. Balfour's infamous Declaration of 1917 to create in Palestine a "national home" for the "Jewish people", was designed, among other things, to curb Jewish support for the Russian Revolution and to stem the tide of further unwanted Jewish immigrants into Britain.

The Nazis would not be an exception in this anti-Semitic chain of pro-Zionist enthusiasts. Indeed, the Zionists would strike a deal with the Nazis very early in their history. It was in 1933 that the infamous Transfer (Ha'avara) Agreement was signed between the Zionists and the Nazi government to facilitate the transfer of German Jews and their property to Palestine and which broke the international Jewish boycott of Nazi Germany started by American Jews. It was in this spirit that Nazi envoys were dispatched to Palestine to report on the successes of Jewish colonisation of the country. Adolf Eichmann returned from his 1937 trip to Palestine full of fantastic stories about the achievements of the racially-separatist Ashkenazi Kibbutz, one of which he visited on Mount Carmel as a guest of the Zionists.

Despite the overwhelming opposition of most German Jews, it was the Zionist Federation of Germany that was the only Jewish group that supported the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, as they agreed with the Nazis that Jews and Aryans were separate and separable races. This was not a tactical support but one based on ideological similitude. The Nazis' Final Solution initially meant the expulsion of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. It is this shared goal of expelling Jews from Europe as a separate unassimilable race that created the affinity between Nazis and Zionists all along."

And the point Massad is trying to prove:

Israel's claim that its critics must be anti-Semites presupposes that its critics believe its claims that it represents "the Jewish people". But it is Israel's claims that it represents and speaks for all Jews that are the most anti-Semitic claims of all.

Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/2013521184814703958.html


OTOH, David Duke's argumentation is completely racist from beginning to end, and in his racist manifesto "My awakening" he's trying to prove that white people are superior to others, especially black people. He's also awarded a few chapters to promoting some common anti-Semitic myths: 18: Jews, Communism and Civil Rights, 19: Who Runs the Media?, 20: The Jewish Influence in Politics, 21: The Roots of Anti-Semitism, 22: Israel: Jewish Supremacy in Action, 23: A Holocaust Inquiry, 24: The Jewish Led Alien Invasion, 25: Jewish Evolutionary Strategy and Claims of Jewish Superiority. A comparison of the writings of David Duke and Massad clearly reveals how different they are. Massad is a scholar criticizing a nationalist ideology, while Duke is a white supremacist writing a racist manifesto.

While quoting David Duke isn't really a smart thing to do, I'll give you two quotes about Jews from his manifesto "My Awakening" for comparison with Massad to illustrate my point that Duke's a racist, and that he's arguing that Jews are inferior:
(Chapter 21)

To understand what has motivated Gentile opposition to Jews as a group, it is important to be aware of Jewish patterns of behavior that Glatzner and other authorities on anti-Semitism fail to acknowledge. So-called anti-Semites have alleged over the centuries that, as a group, Jews have disproportionately engaged in unethical and exploitative practices such as usury, the slave trade, prostitution, fraudulent business schemes and various other criminal enterprises. Many have alleged that Jews use unethical business practices and collusion to gain control over commerce. Anti-Semites have charged that many historic examples exist of Jews collaborating with the foreign enemies of their host nations. Charges of Jewish disloyalty are common since the time of their sojourn in Egypt, and have continued right up to the present controversy of Jewish spies convicted of Israeli espionage.

(Chapter 25)

I wondered if the Jews had become genetically distanced from the other peoples of Europe and, if so, how deep the divide was. Had their supremacist and ethnocentric tendencies become ingrained in their genetic code, or were they
simply a result of the cultural attitude of their religion and the separate societies they created? Did genetic impulses create the ideology of Judaism that reinforced and intensified the Jewish genotype? Years later, in the 1990s, the same Jewish-dominated anthropology that rejected the importance of European racial consciousness and sense of identity has reasserted Jewishness and the "Jewish identity." In "Jews, Multiculturalism, and Boasian Anthropology," in The American Anthropologist, Jewish writer Gelya Frank celebrates American Boasian antiracist anthropology as "Jewish history." She points out that the central Jewish role was intentionally whitewashed for fear that Gentiles would realize that Jews had a radical agenda.

Source: Nope.

[leftynyc]

11. Stop digging

That you can't see the anti semitism in holocaust revisionism is pretty fucking disgusting.

[Little Tich]

18. It's just too bad that I can't find any elements of Holocaust revisionism in Massad's article or

anywhere else in what I've read of him so far. If it's so obvious to you, why don't you point me in the right direction?

[King_David]

15. Well you're wrong

And shame on you, you're better than this.

[Little Tich]

19. Massad is writing on a very touchy subject, and I think he's using the historical evidence wrong.

However, what's needed is a good refutation providing a different interpretation of the evidence, not just pretending he's an anti-Semite.

[aranthus]

6. Not at all.

Rather the manifest nature of the evidence suggests that you either have no idea what antisemitism is, or else that your opinion is lacking in good faith. Shira has already posted some evidence, but there is much more. Massad denies that the Jews are a people entitled to any kind of national entity. If I suggested the same about the Palestinians, you and certainly the Palestinians would call me all kinds of a racist, and certainly think that I was anti-Palestinian. Massad's statements are per se antisemitism.

[Little Tich]

8. I don't believe that peoples in themselves have any rights whatsoever.

All rights of peoples are derived from the human rights of individuals as a group, and political rights shouldn't be awarded to immaterial entities.

[aranthus]

12. I knew that.

It is the foundation of my point. To be completely clear: I believe that you have trouble seeing the antisemitism of Joseph Massad, Ben White, Mondoweis, and their ilk, in large part because you share many of their beliefs.

[Little Tich]

20. Maybe, or maybe not...

My beliefs aren't specific to the I/P conflict, they're derived from what I believe in general, and I base my positions on the I/P issue on where I already stand on other, similar issues.

For example, I believe that all nationalist ideologies, including Zionism, are inherently racist, simply because they exclude groups of people from being part of that vision on ethnic grounds. It's a belief that's helped me pretty well in navigating the murky waters of Scandinavian nationalism, and I see no reason treat Zionism differently.

[aranthus]

23. Again, I knew this.

I don't want to get into an argument with you as to the validity of your theory or its consequences(largely because it would be pointless, and I just don't have the time). Suffice to say that my point stands.

[6chars]

13. this is a keen observation

about how these two characteristics go together

[aranthus]

14. It's pretty simple.

Most of the people who claim to "not see" antisemitism are simply antisemites who find it very easy to see the evil of Israel. What is more difficult to see is how those attitude derive from Leftist ideology.

[6chars]

16. There is a history of this attitude derived from ideology

Not everyone is aware of this history - even those influenced by it, but there were highly organized efforts by the Soviet Union through numerous channels to promote -- for reasons that were not entirely wholesome -- both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Their propaganda specialists originated and embedded certain themes that we hear echoed today.

It is useful to read about this history so as to avoid being a tool of dead propagandists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Anti-Zionism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionist_Committee_of_the_Soviet_Public
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_and_antisemitism

To juries: people might be uncomfortable and consider it anti-progressive to point out the historical connection with Soviet propaganda and certain memes of the modern left, but the links provided are well-documented and credible. I am not speculating about how any individual has come to their personal view.

[aranthus]

22. Thanks for posting the links. n/t

[shira]

10. You can't back your accusations of racism up w/o contradicting yourself.

If we apply the standards you have for Zionist racism to BDS style racism, you contradict yourself.

Nadia Abu El-Haj denies that ancient Jewish Kingdoms in Israel ever existed.

"What was considered to have been ancient Jewish national existence and sovereignty in their homeland" is "a tale best understood as the modern nation's origin myth… transported into the realm of history." The Hasmonean and Davidic dynasties are a mere "belief," an "ideological assertion," a "pure political fabrication."

Now recall what you have said about "revisionists" who deny Palestinian history out of animus for Palestinians.

You have 2 standards.

[Little Tich]

21. Perhaps you should have read what was said about that quote further down the thread...

richards1052, Fri Sep-14-07
(snip)

"And I warn anyone interested in this debate that quotations fr. her opponents have been fabricated, truncated & distorted. You'll notice how truncated Lurking Dem's last sentence is with three different phrases placed in quotation marks. Unless you see opponents quote entire passage unedited do not believe they are providing an in-context representation of her work. Abu El Haj does not believe the Hasmonean & Davidic dynasties were a "pure political fabrication." But she does believe what a distinguished school of Israeli archaeology believes: that stories of the Davidic dynasty were inflated by subsequent Biblical writers to justify their particular political pt of view in the ongoing battle between the two Israelite kingdoms of Judah and Israel. If an Israeli archaeologist can believe this, why can't a Palestinian-American one? Perhaps because of a mistrust that any Palestinian-American can hold a dispassionate scholarly pt of view on anything related to Israeli-Palestinian relations? But if a Jewish scholar can pass such a test--why can't a Palestinian-American one?"

Source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=184652&mesg_id=184680