Tour of U.S. Schools Reveals Why Zionism Is Flunking on Campus


By Natan Sharansky
Forward Magazine
October 24, 2003

When I got to Rutgers University in New Jersey last month, I almost forgot I was on a college campus. The atmosphere was far from the cool, button-down academic reserve typical of such institutions. It was more reminiscent of a battlefield.

My arrival was greeted by a noisy demonstration of Palestinian and Jewish students holding signs reading "Racist Israel" and "War Criminals," together with black-coated Neturei Karta members calling for the destruction of the blasphemous Zionist entity. Faculty members, predictably led by a former Israeli professor, had sent out e-mails protesting the granting of a platform to a representative of the "Nazi, war-criminal" state. Of course, there was the famous pie incident in which a member of a campus Jewish anti-occupation group made his way past my security guards and plastered me in the face with a cream pie while shouting "End the Occupation."

Opposed to them were hundreds of no less rowdy Jewish students, full of motivation to defend Israel and give the protesters back as good as they got. After the pie incident, when I returned to the hall and mounted the stage, the atmosphere was so electric, so full of adrenalin, that the Palestinians and their supporters who had come to disrupt the event had no choice but to abandon their plans for provocation.

Things were not much calmer at Boston University: An anonymous bomb threat brought swarms of police to the lecture hall and almost forced a cancellation of my appearance. But here, too, some good resulted when the bomb threat caused the lecture to be moved to a larger hall, which was quickly filled with some 600 listeners who were unwilling to accept the violent silencing of pro-Israel views.

These moments -- the pie throwing, the bomb threat, the demonstration -- as raucous, threatening and contentious as they were, are among the more pleasant memories from my 13-campus tour of the United States. Perhaps it is because at these moments I felt that there was some point to my trip, perhaps because the violent hostility had stirred the students and motivated them to want to fight and win -- which I, of course, was delighted to see.

There were other moments during my tour, difficult moments when I felt fear, sadness and worry. During a frank and friendly conversation with a group of Jewish students at Harvard University, one student admitted to me that she was afraid -- afraid to express support for Israel, afraid to take part in pro-Israel organizations, afraid to be identified. The mood on campus had turned so anti-Israel that she was afraid that her open identification could cost her, damaging her grades and her academic future. That her professors, who control her final grades, were likely to view such activism unkindly, and that the risk was too great.

Having grown up in the communist Soviet Union, I am very familiar with this fear to express one's opinions, with the need to hold the "correct opinions" in order to get ahead, with the reality that expressing support for Israel is a blot on one's resume. But to find all these things at Harvard Business School? In a place that was supposed to be open, liberal, professional? At first I thought this must be an individual case, particular to this student. I thought her fears were exaggerated. But my conversations with other students at various universities made it clear that her feelings are widespread, that the situation on campuses in the United States and Canada is more serious than we think. And this is truly frightening.

To most Israelis, what happens on the world's campuses hardly seems a life-and-death concern. The world is against us in any case. And as for Jewish students, why should we care? They've got troubles? Let them move to Israel. In my own view, however, this is a fateful issue for the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

Israel has few strategic assets as critical as American Jewry. The fact that the world's leading superpower is a steadfast ally of Israel is due in large measure to this proud and activist community. But nobody can guarantee that the current state of affairs will continue indefinitely. I have been in close contact with the American Jewish community for more than 30 years, and its leadership is largely unchanged. I entered a Russian prison, I got out, I moved to Israel, I became a Cabinet minister and the people I work with are mostly the same people. The leadership is getting old, and the younger generation is not stepping forward.

The continuing support of American Jewry depends on this younger generation. If it chooses to affiliate actively with the Jewish people, if it supports Israel and acts on its behalf, then we will continue to have a strong backbone of support in a world that is turning more and more hostile. But if this younger generation were to disappear -- whether through assimilation or an unwillingness to be identified -- Israel would find within a very few years that it faces an entirely different United States.

This younger generation is growing up on the university campus. That is where the core of future administrations is taking shape. The students I met at Princeton, Columbia and Harvard will be the decision-makers of the coming decades. Will they be as pro-Israel as today's decision-makers? Will they stand up fearlessly for Israel? Given the level of anti-Israel sentiment on today's campuses, where being "in" means being hostile or at least apathetic toward Israel, I have grave doubts.

The transformation of campuses into hothouses of anti-Israel opinion did not happen by itself, nor did it occur overnight. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the mood on campus was completely different. Jewish students then were at the center of student activism, leading movements for human rights, including the Soviet Jewry freedom movement. Demonstrations, hunger strikes, mass rallies -- all this combined to form a massive army that was largely made up, as the Soviet secret police used to put it sneeringly, of "students and housewives." These struggles were an inseparable part of the Jewish identities of those young people. They were certain of themselves, certain of the justice of their cause and certain that they were on the side of the angels. The goal was clear, the enemy was defined and their pride in themselves, their Jewishness and Israel was boundless.

When I sat for Sabbath dinner with 300 Jewish students at Columbia University in New York -- together with Glenn Richter, who in 1964 at the university launched the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry -- and I told them about those days, the events seemed to them all but unimaginable. Today, when Jewish activity on campus is directed almost entirely inward, when Jewish student organizations feel like walled fortresses in enemy territory, when pro-Israel students hardly dream of taking leadership positions in campus struggles for human rights, those days seem like a distant dream.

Years of massive investments of money and effort by Arab states and the Palestinians have changed the picture. One after the other, departments of Middle Eastern studies have been set up on university campuses, with generous Saudi funding -- departments that worked to establish pseudo-scientific theories, presenting Israel as the last colonial state, a state whose very existence is immoral regardless of borders, a state that should not exist. Differing views are as a matter of course not tolerated. When Jewish community leaders decided in the last few years to begin investing funds to create chairs in Israel studies, they discovered there is no one to teach them. There are no experts, no writers. The field has been abandoned.

Not only in the intellectual arena have we abandoned the field. In the public relations field, too, the Palestinians have learned, unlike the Israelis, to appreciate the importance of the university as the shaper of the next generation, and to concentrate their efforts there. Articulate, effective speakers have been dispatched to campuses to mobilize the idealistic students for their own political interests.

They have been sent to explain that despite the fact that in the Arab nations, as in the autonomous areas of the Palestinian Authority, there are no rights for women, minorities, gays or nearly anyone else, that despite all this they are the true bearers of the banner of human rights; that all true seekers of justice should act on their behalf, and against Israel's.

The absurdity cries out to the heavens, but no one seems to notice. The banner of human rights, once identified to a great degree with Jews, has become a weapon against them. Liberal and democratic discourse on human rights serves mainly as a vehicle for attacks against Israel, and increasingly against Jews.

In the last three years the process has greatly intensified. Students, young, idealistic and naturally tending to see the world in black and white, have been greatly influenced by daily media reports about "human rights violations" carried out by Israel, by pictures of Palestinian children, by unbalanced reportage. Lacking a serious "other side," lacking any real information about the roots of the conflict, lacking any serious Israeli public relations effort, the campuses have become more and more hostile.

When I assumed my current position as minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs, it was clear to me that this issue of campuses as centers of anti-Israelism and their influence on the young Jews of the world must be at the center of my agenda. It is a matter of critical importance for the State of Israel and the Jewish people. And so I decided to travel, to learn the facts first-hand and to try to begin a process of change.

Before I left Israel my daughter said to me, "Dad, if they throw eggs at you, duck." My other daughter countered: "Why duck? Catch them and throw them back." You may laugh, but that is how I felt. After ducking for so long, while Israel was under constant attack for supposedly being a "war criminal," a "Nazi state" and the "embodiment of evil," I felt the time had come to throw back a few eggs. Especially on campuses, especially on the topic of human rights. Not to apologize, but to try to show the true picture -- who is the only democracy in the Middle East and who are the dictatorships, where are human rights honored and where are they trampled.

I wanted to show that even during a cruel war against terrorism, Israel was showing great sensitivity to human rights -- certainly in comparison to other democracies at war: the United States in Afghanistan, NATO in Yugoslavia, Russia in Chechnya. I talked about the battle of Jenin, when we decided not to use airplanes that could hurt the Palestinian civilian population, and instead sent our soldiers hunting house to house for weapons and terrorists.

I wanted, as someone who had spent a considerable part of his life struggling for human rights, to bring the human rights struggle back to its proper context. To return it to its true owners. To explain that support for terrorists and dictators like Yasser Arafat and his gang cannot be considered support for human rights.

For six days I traveled across the United States. I did not meet with administration officials or do any politicking. Just campuses. Meeting students, instructors, Jewish and non-Jewish activists. A marathon of 13 campuses in six days. I discovered an enormous thirst for knowledge, for straight answers about these supposed "human rights violations" and "war crimes." I learned that combining human rights, a popular, burning issue among students, and Israel, a very unpopular issue, works to Israel's advantage, because even the most pro-Palestinian students, including Arab students, had to back down when the discussion centered squarely and honestly on human rights and democracy.

But I also learned that every such victory was a limited one, like capturing a single hill in enemy territory. The overall picture is deeply worrying. On every campus I visited, Jewish students make up between 10% and 20% of the population, but no more than a tenth of them, by my estimate, take part in Jewish or pro-Israel activity. Another tiny but outspoken fraction serves as the spearhead of anti-Israel activity, for there is no better cover for hiding the racist nature of causes like an anti-Israel boycott than a Jewish professor or student eager to prove that he is holier than the pope. And the rest? The rest are simply silent. They are not identified, not active, not risk-takers. Nearly 90% of our students are Jews of silence.

To the credit of the activists, it must be said that they do impressive work. But they are few, and many are tired and discouraged. One student who was active in pro-Israel organizations told us that at a certain point he could no longer stand the peer pressure of those around him who viewed him as a pro-Israel obsessive. He now pours his idealistic energies into an organic farm he started. Now that he is involved in environmental activism everyone is happy with him. Having myself grown up in a place where those around me barely tolerated my Jewish involvements, I know that this sort of peer pressure will drive most people to flee, just as we -- most of us -- in Russia tried to run away from our Jewishness to the ivory towers of science or the arts. We thought that scientific excellence would save us from the mark of Cain on our foreheads.

Can the trends be reversed? Can we recapture the campus? I believe we can. But it will require a concentrated effort and a genuine change of consciousness and direction in Israel's informational efforts. We in Israel and in Jewish communities around the world must combine our efforts and work together. In the United States things have begun to stir, and various organizations are active on campus. Now it is time for Israel to do its share.


This article first appeared in Ma'ariv and is reprinted with permission. Translated by J.J. Goldberg.

* Find this article at:
http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.10.24/oped1.html

Crossposted @ Israpundit.com



4 following articles from Opinionjournal.com


Good News Watch


"One of the chief arguments against coalition intervention in Iraq was that military action there would 'destabilize the region,' " notes Jerry Bowyer on TechCentralStation.com. Bowyer applies a market test to this argument and finds it wanting:

Looking at the countries with readily available [stock] market indices--Israel TA-100, Turkish ISE National-100, Pakistani Karachi 100, Egyptian CMA--we find that every one of those indices has risen over the time period, from George Bush's ultimatum on March 17th to now. Egypt is up 19.3%; Israel is up 29.3%; Turkey is up 45.1%; and the-powder-keg-known-as-Pakistan is up an astonishing 67.5%!

"The U.S. command said Thursday crime rates in Iraq dropped significantly in the past two weeks as Iraqi police tightened their control on security," United Press International reports from Baghdad:

U.S. Gen. Mike Hazelink, who is in charge of security in the Iraqi capital, said car thefts dropped by 50 percent, homicide by 65 percent and armed robberies by 30 percent, according to the latest statistics tabulated by coalition forces.

And the BBC reports that "Afghanistan is to compete in a beauty contest for the first time in more than 30 years and almost two years after the fall of the oppressive Taleban regime":

Vida Samadzai, 25, who has lived in the United States since 1996, will compete alongside 60 other women from across the world for the Miss Earth title in Manila, the Philippines, contest organisers said.

Ms Samadzai, or Miss Afghanistan as she will be known in the competition, will take part in all sections of the contest, including the swimsuit section.

The Hindustan Times has a nice collection of photos of the Afghan beauty.


Weasel Watch

"A top Iraqi official attending an international conference on raising funds to rebuild Iraq warned Thursday that France and Germany's limited donations would not be forgotten," CNN reports from Madrid:

Ayad Allawi, the current head of Iraq's U.S.-appointed governing council, said he hoped German and French officials would reconsider their decision not to boost their contributions beyond funds already pledged through the European Union.

"As far as Germany and France are concerned, really, this was a regrettable position they had," Allawi said. "I don't think the Iraqis are going to forget easily that in the hour of need, those countries wanted to neglect Iraq."

Chris Patten, external affairs commissioner for the European Union, tells the Washington Post: "You can't expect European taxpayers who felt particularly hostile to military intervention to feel hugely enthusiastic about spending a large amount of money in Iraq." Maybe, but you can expect European leaders to show a little leadership for a change.

The Post adds that Arab countries, with the exception of Kuwait, also are refusing to pony up:

"Yes, they are balking," one U.S. official said of the Arab states, as the American side continued to press hard for a breakthrough. Without Saudi participation, he said, it would be difficult to create a "snowball effect" among Arab donors. The Saudis are the " 'big brother' of the Gulf, [but] they have not helped in a constructive fashion," the official said.

This is hardly surprising, since a stable Iraq moving toward democracy would be an enormous threat to nearby Arab dictators' hold on power.

Not everyone is trying to stiff Iraq, though: "Poor yet sympathetic to Iraq's postwar plight, the ex-communist countries of the 'New Europe' that deployed small contingents of peacekeeping troops are now sending food, medicine and other goods in lieu of cash," reports the Associated Press.


Arab Apartheid

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a branch of Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, "distributed leaflets in Jerusalem on Wednesday threatening to execute Palestinians who sell their property to Jews or act as intermediaries in such deals," the Jerusalem Post reports:

"The Aksa Martyrs Brigades warn those thieves and traitors who are selling [Arab-owned] lands through Israeli real estate agents," said the leaflets, some of which were distributed on the Temple Mount.

This refutes the anti-Semitic lie that Israel is an "apartheid state." Whereas Israel has perhaps a million Arab citizens, Palestinian Arabs are willing to murder fellow Arabs in an attempt to ensure that the disputed territories are Judenrein.


And some FUN! : 'I Hate Moderates'

Cheers to blogger "Frank J." for this delightful bon mot (ellipsis in original):

There is now a Centrist Coalition blog. I hate moderates . . . much more than even liberals. I bet Satan is a moderate; the best way to get evil accepted is to package it with some good. That's what moderates do; they're always like, "Oh! I'm so special because I don't take a firm stance on issues, and I see value in everyone's viewpoints." I bet right now a moderate is reading this and partially agreeing with it. Damn you!


Fair and Balanced?
PBS sees only the left-wing side of "complex topics."

Friday, October 24, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT

In polite company, it is now well known that the Fox slogan "fair and balanced" is not to be uttered unless accompanied by a knowing roll of the eyes or some ironic inflection of the voice. But judging from an education initiative offered by WNET New York, public television has fairness issues of its own. And they make Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes look positively mainstream.

The exhibit here is "Human Rights 101." A "multimedia human rights initiative" aimed at students, it was launched earlier this month by WNET's Educational Resources Center. The package offers kids "insight into such complex topics such as tolerance, racism, women's rights, refugees, and religious freedom," with the goal of leaving them "equipped for life with knowledge that will help them effect change."

On one thing we agree: These are indeed "complex topics." But a review of the listed human-rights organizations yields little hint of complexity. To the contrary, with the exception of Freedom House, the resources students will find here are pretty much those you might expect to be given by, well, the Democratic National Committee. That might not be surprising: WNET is the same station that a few years back was embarrassed when it was found swapping mailing lists with the DNC and a host of other, mainly Democratic groups.

Human Rights 101 evinces similar ideological predilections. A student who clicks onto Environmental Defense will find out how to oppose drilling in the Arctic. The American Friends Service Committee lists a "press availability" for explaining how "Bush's Arm-twisting Victories in Congress and U.N. Will Deepen Quagmire in Iraq, Budget Crisis at Home." Equality Now, dedicated to women's rights, cites a "global campaign against sexual exploitation of women by US military forces in South Korea and around the world." Madre, another women's group, is today hosting "the Patriot Act Un-birthday Bash." And so it goes down the line, on everything from abortion to globalization.



If you believe that there may be other sides to these issues, you certainly won't learn where to find them from this list. On religious freedom, for example, where is the Acton Institute for Religious Liberty or the Becket Fund or even the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom? On trade and globalization, wouldn't students benefit hearing from, say, the Cato Institute, or seeing a reference to The Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation annual Index of Economic Freedom, which underscores the critical role of free markets and property rights for poor people in developing nations?
The same gaping hole runs through almost every issue. On the environment, where's PERC, the Montana-based green group dedicated to private stewardship? And what about Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship, which has done yeoman's work on behalf of prisoner rights and rehabilitation? Come to think of it, though the Web site for Human Rights 101 includes virtually every United Nations rights declaration, what about steering American students to something really radical: say, a discourse about James Madison and the Bill of Rights?

Remember, the people who think this WNET list provides an objective overview of the subject are the same people who can't keep their brie down when the subject turns to the conservative domination of Fox News or talk radio. But whatever the direction private broadcasters may take, they at least do it on their own dime. With the General Accounting Office now in the midst of the first review of funding for public broadcasting in nearly two decades, that's something Congress might want to consider before cutting its next check.


This article hits it right on the spot. I feel the same regarding NPR [National Palestinian(!) radio] as follows from the following email which i wrote the day before:

Dear Sir,

It is truly revolting to read the headlines of your station's reports, let alone listen to your anti-Israeli bias.
A simple glance at your headlines in the past days and weeks, shows Israel to constantly be the aggressor while the PAlestinians are the victims. Your coverage of the Israeli opinion is not only laconic but in that short time you tend to interview Israelis from the far left or human rights activists. Daily terror attacks against Israelis go uncovered, while you give ample time to Palestinian voices of grief. It is such a recurring pattern that I won't even bother proving it. Just take a close look at the transcript of ANY of your reports.

I think that National PAlestinian radio (NPR) is a more fitting name to your station.
Shame on you for using public dollars for such biased reports.


Another Holocaust?
from: Pakistan Today!!!! wow!

By: Daniel Pipes

The prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, informed the world last week, among other things, that "Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." In reaction, Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, described Mahathir's comments as "hateful, they are outrageous." She then added, "I don't think they are emblematic of the Muslim world." If only she were right about that.

In fact, Mahathir's views are precisely emblematic of Muslim discourse about Jews - symbolized by the standing ovation his speech received from an all-Muslim audience of leaders representing 57 states. Then, a Saudi newspaper reports, when Western leaders criticized Mahathir, "Muslim leaders closed ranks" around him with words of praise ("very correct," "a very, very wise assessment").

Although anti-Jewish sentiments among Muslims go back centuries, today's hostility results from two main developments: Jewish success in modern times and the establishment of Israel. Until about 1970, however, Muslim resentment and fear of Jewish power, remained relatively quiet.

This changed in the 1970s, when a further political radicalization combined with an oil boom gave states like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Libya the will and the means to sponsor anti-Jewish ideas worldwide. With barely a Muslim voice to counter ever-more outlandish theories, these multiplied and deepened. For the first time, the Muslim world became the main locus of anti-Jewish theories.

By now, notes Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, "Hatred of Jews is widespread throughout the Muslim world. It is taught in the schools and preached in the mosques. Cartoons in Muslim newspapers routinely portray Jews in blatantly anti-Semitic terms."

Indeed, Mahathir is hardly the only Muslim ruler to make anti-Jewish statements. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said in 2001 that Israelis try "to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ." The Iranian ayatollahs and Saudi princes have a rich history of anti-Jewish venom, as of course do Egyptian television programs and Palestinian textbooks.

Of the many examples, one stands out for me: a June 2002 interview with a 3-year-old girl named Basmallah on Saudi television, made available by the Middle East Media and Research Institute:

Anchor: Basmallah, are you familiar with the Jews?
Basmallah: Yes.
Anchor: Do you like them?
Basmallah: No.
Anchor: Why don't you like them?
Basmallah: Because...
Anchor: Because they are what?
Basmallah: They're apes and pigs.
Anchor: Because they are apes and pigs. Who said they are so?
Basmallah: Our God.
Anchor: Where did he say this?
Basmallah: In the Koran.

The little girl is wrong, but her words show that, contrary to Condoleezza Rice's analysis. Muslim antisemitism extends even to the youngest children. That Mahathir himself is no Islamist but (in the words of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman) "about as forward-looking a Muslim leader as we're likely to find" also points to the pervasiveness of anti-Jewish bias.

In its attitudes toward Jews, the Muslim world today resembles Germany of the 1930s - a time when insults, caricatures, conspiracy theories, and sporadic violence prepared Germans for the mass murder that followed.

The same might be happening today. Wild accusatory comments like Mahathir's have become banal. Against Israelis, violence has already reached a rate approaching one death per day over the past three years. Outside Israel, violence against Jews is also persistent: a Jewish building blown up in Argentina, Daniel Pearl's murder in Pakistan, stabbings in France, the Brooklyn Bridge and LAX killings in the United States.

These episodes, plus calling Jews "apes and pigs" could serve as the psychological preparation that one day leads to assaulting Israel with weapons of mass destruction. Armaments chemical, biological, and nuclear would be the successors of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau. Millions of Jews would perish in another Holocaust.

As in the 1930s, the world at large - including the U.S. government - again seems not to note the deadliness of processes now underway. Anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence are decried, to be sure, but with little sense of urgency and even less of their cumulative impact.

Condoleezza Rice and other top-ranking officials need to recognize the power and reach of the anti-Jewish ideology among Muslims, then develop active ways to combat it. This evil has already taken innocent lives; unless combated it could take many more.

(Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Militant Islam Reaches America (W.W. Norton).)